Instinct: More Than Just Survival
by KeianaLunae
Summary: A creature's instinct to survive is strong; It's also about more than just escape. Set in S2E08 "Conversion": What else did Sheppard do during his time as an Iratus-Human hybrid? Lorne knows the truth and has to deal with the fall-out.. but he can't fix everything alone. [Sheppard, Lorne, OFC]
1. Prolegomenon

_A/N: Hi folks, and welcome to my 3rd published SGA fan-fiction! It's a 14 chapter story that was posted incrementally. This one is a little different in that it's a lot darker and more angsty than my usual stories._ _I do feel that it is my responsibility as author to warn my readers about the presence of potentially upsetting content even though I believe you'll all be just fine. You all survived SGA itself, and wouldn't be here if you didn't like Sci-Fi!_

 _ **Sensitive Topics/ Spoiler Alert:**_ _Some of the chapters will contain moderately graphic violence, one has a brief, non-graphic, dubious consent, violent sexual situation, and another discusses abortion. The events described are brief but integral to the story so I assure you that it wasn't added in gratuitously._

 _I promise there's a mostly happy ending, though, along with plenty of sprinkles of humour and Lorne awesomeness. I hope you enjoy it, because there is much to enjoy!  
_

* * *

 **Prolegomenon** (Noun, [proh-li-gom-uh-non]): a preliminary discussion; introduction; foreword; exordium; overture; prelude.

* * *

 _As a human-iratus hybrid, I had always wondered how much of Sheppard's crack at freedom was driven by creature instinct. Moments before fleeing his quarters he had asked Weir to kill him, clearly still himself, and she declined... so why would he run? I had always speculated that he had done it on purpose to force the result he wanted... but if he wanted them to kill him, then why would he have run away when the search team were shooting at him?_

 _Why would he have fought back just as they switched to lethal weaponry, and then tried to get away? And why the odd behaviour with Teyla in the atrium? All of his post-escape behaviour seemed to be driven more by survival instinct than a deliberate attempt at getting shot. That meant his creature side had taken over in the time between fleeing his room and encountering Teyla and the team of Marines in the atrium._

 _Creatures operate on survival instinct. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to remember that for most animals, survival instinct is more than just "Run away": It's Escape. Hide. Feed._ _Procreate._ _This story focuses on what else bug!Sheppard may have gotten up to in the time that he was roaming through the halls of Atlantis, based on the behavioural clues given in the episode and a healthy dose of imaginative sci-fi creature analysis. What else doesn't John Sheppard remember doing?_

* * *

 _ **Recap - Ep 2x08 "Conversion":**_ _**Weir goes to see Sheppard to tell him about the failure of the mission to retrieve the Iratus eggs. He demands she try again. When she refuses, he insists that she kill him instead. Unfortunately Weir also seems unwilling to kill him, so he grabs her by the throat and starts choking her, reiterating his demand that they try again, and she informs him that they lost two marines and won't send more people to their death. Sheppard abruptly drops her and breaks out of his room, knocking out the two marines standing guard at his door. He disappears into the city as Weir scrambles security teams to go after him.**_

There's the part of him that wants to die, to free him from this hellish conversion into a monster. He can feel himself slipping away; knows he's become dangerous; knows that he's a serious threat to the city that needs to be stopped.

Then there's the other part of him - the new part, the changed creature part - screaming for survival. It's fighting to get out, get away, get free. It wants to live, and it's the part of him that's in charge right now. He's not sure which part was in charge when he had grabbed Elizabeth. He's not sure why he didn't fight harder when his creature half decided to make a break for it. It had seemed right, at the time.

He wanted.., no, he needed them to take him out. He needed to force their hand, push them to take action against him; take the decision out of Elizabeth's hands since it was clear that she wouldn't kill him. As soon as he'd taken down the guards and escaped it had become a military situation, and Caldwell would do what was needed. Unfortunately, as soon as he was out of the room his new half had seized complete control, revelling in the chance to escape.

Atlantis is a big city, but he's come to know it fairly well. Thanks to the recent flooding, and 10,000 years of submersion before that, the internal sensors are still down in many areas. The creature mind, feeding off Sheppard's detailed knowledge of the city, takes immediate advantage of that and slips away rapidly into the depths of the city where he knows it's safe.

* * *

McKay is up in the control room with Ronon, debriefing Caldwell on their failed mission, when Weir's call for security comes over the radio. Ronon is gone like a flash, not stopping for orders from Caldwell. McKay hesitates - he's no good with running and chasing and fighting. They need to find Sheppard. Life signs! He spins around to the control panel and calls up the city-wide life signs scanner, but it's no use. The sensors are still down in many areas, and the dots are indistinguishable from each other. Caldwell is hovering behind him, expectantly.

Caldwell insists there has to be way to find Sheppard. The uptight ship-commanding Colonel has the nerve to insinuate that he's incapable of tracking down Sheppard despite being surrounded by the most advanced technology in the known universe?! It's not like he wants Sheppard to get away, what with the mutation progressing at the rate it… wait. His fingers snap of their own accord as the process of initiating his new idea falls into place in his mind.

He might be able to tune the biometric sensors to differentiate between humans and Sheppard (by combining the the medical scanners coding and integrating some of the tissue samples Carson has taken from Sheppard so far as a reference baseline), but it's going to take a while to calibrate the life signs sensor with the added functionality and safely boost the equipment sensor range to cover the entire city.

He's still dusty from the dirt of Lorne's grenade, and sweaty from the long hike; these problems evaporate as Caldwell says "Do it!". He inelegantly displaces an obstructive technician to begin reprogramming the console whilst yelling at Beckett over the radio to run a full spectrum lifesigns wavelength analysis on Sheppard's most recent mutated tissue samples.

* * *

With the control room firmly under McKay's command, Caldwell heads down to the Infirmary to see Weir. He finds her being checked out on the bed next to Major Lorne's. There's a red welt around her throat, and her voice is a little raspy, but she's perfectly fine otherwise. Lorne is a little ragged and dirty from his proximity to the grenade blast, but as Caldwell approaches he waves away the medic peering into his ears with an otoscope and pulls himself up off the bed to greet the Colonel. A flash of a grimace accompanies his motions, but there are some things you just don't mention.

An impromptu 3-way pow-wow follows regarding what happened and their appropriate response actions; Lorne makes a recommendation and Caldwell can't argue with it. He's been in charge less than a day and the Major knows the details of the various protocols. He looks to Weir, surprised when she agrees with Lorne's recommendation; he expected that she would fight him over enacting such a stringent protection security protocol. She also agrees on assembling search parties to continue looking while McKay works his sensor magic. Lorne offers to put out the call, but Caldwell waves him off.

As Acting Military Commander he has to give the instruction. Weir slides off her bed and joins him as he turns to head back to the control room. The doctor on call nods at her, indicating that she's good to go, but promptly orders Lorne to get back into bed when the Major moves to follow. For a moment, Caldwell expects that he'll have to order Lorne to stay in bed, but the Major isn't Sheppard. His demeanour is calm and controlled. With a neutral, expressionless look at his temporary CO, he backs up and carefully re-deposits himself on the bed while the doctor picks up the previously abandoned otoscope.

Caldwell and Weir make their way back to the control room, and after a few swift taps from the technician on duty, the Colonel is given the go-ahead. The announcement is broadcast on all channels and the city-wide PA: Cluster Security Protocol 11-B is enacted. Weir follows up his announcement with a more explicit message: All expedition members are instructed to abandon their work immediately, lock down their labs and gather in their nearest designated safe zone. His initial flash of annoyance at her jumping on the airwaves in a military situation fades as he realises that the civilians on base may need to be reminded of what 11-B actually entails.

He can't simply assume that the scientists remember all the details of each protocol - they haven't been trained for it. He may have to look into simplifying the protocols in such a way that there was no reliance on civilians remembering tricky security details in the future. He files that away on his mental to-do list - right now there are security teams to coordinate into search groups and grids. The protocol was only the first step - by clustering the civilians together in designated zones, they might more easily get a lock on a solitary target moving about the city, but armed search teams with hand-held scanners would still be necessary.

They would find Sheppard. Every minute that the mutating former soldier was running free was a security risk to the city.

He had to be dealt with.

* * *

 _Standard SGA Fan Fiction Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis; I do not own any of the original series' characters who appear/are mentioned in this story (Sheppard, Lorne, Weir, Beckett, Teyla, Ronon, McKay, Caldwell); all rights belong to the original creators of this fantastic series which I adore; I write only for fun and derive no remuneration from this._

 _ _Independent creations:_ Dr Cartwright, Dr Lessik, The Eslop, and Gunny Fricks are mine. Amanda, __Parris, Roux and Mackie are mine; they fell out of my random geeks &goons name generator. Dr Ellingson is a name I assigned to an extraneous science character who appeared in the show for all of 5 seconds.  
_


	2. Abdūcere

_A/N: Okay, weekly updates aren't going to work for me. I'm like that with presents too - I can't wait until a birthday to give them; I have to give them immediately. So, I upped it to a bi-weekly schedule. That idea lasted about an hour, so here's Chapter 2 (it's a whopper, the biggest of them all) because Chapter 1 just seems boring on its own. Time to get to the action! This instalment features purple squid, petty larceny, dark corridors, and OFC whumpage.  
_

 _Oh, and a shout-out to my amazingsauce beta, Redtail53, who has been patiently waiting almost 3 months for me to get my act together and post this. I hope you like the extras.  
_

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 **Abdūcere** (present infinitive of **Abdūcō,** Verb, [ab-du-ko]): To lead away from; to carry away forcibly; arrest; remove.

* * *

The city-wide PA is loud and has a slightly shrill edge, but Colonel Caldwell's voice comes through clear and cold as he instructs all personnel to enact cluster security protocol 11-B. Xenobiologist Casey Cartwright stands up straight as she listens to the twice repeated emergency situation instruction. She's working alone in one of the newer Xeno-category labs, mucking out a series of aquaculture tanks and isn't wearing her radio in case it accidentally ends up in the water (again). The earpieces are expensive, and after the last time one of them ended up in a tank of almost-seaweed-goop she's taken to safely storing hers in her bag when she's knee-deep in _anything_ remotely liquid-based.

11-B is a rare protocol, developed by Sheppard himself during the first year. If they're enacting it, it's probably to do with the Colonel's current... bug transformation. Everyone in the city knows about it, even little old her, down in the aquaculture tanks. Gossip spreads through Atlantis faster than a nanovirus can. Doctor Weir follows Colonel Caldwell on the PA and explicitly guides them in the actions to take. Casey quickly drags herself out of the tank in response to Dr Weir's words and, realising that she won't have time to get properly changed given the response time required for 11-B, decides to just keep her rubber dungarees on. She grabs her bag off a nearby table with one hand, shuts down the three laptops in the empty lab with the other, engages the appropriate door locking protocol behind her and proceeds in the direction of her nearest safe zone.

She's on the stairs heading to the nearby transporter when the lights go out. Uh-oh. Without the lights the stairs are pitch black. She's not going anywhere quickly without some light, so she digs through her bag and pulls out her mini flashlight, the waterproof one that Amanda from XenoAnthropology had given her for her birthday just two months before. Her previous one had died a sad death when Dr Lessik's _Erodunctus Eslopecialium_ (Special Giant Neon Purple Space Squid) had managed to get a tentacle out of his improperly secured tank and decided the neon orange object she was wielding in the tank next door had looked like a tasty treat.

* * *

Dr Lessik had apologised profusely for that, and Casey had simply counted herself lucky that the Eslop was not carnivorous, spiked, or venomous. A wet, suctioning appendage had suddenly wrapped itself around her from behind, and then around her arm, and she'd been pulled against the wall. The tight snaking appendage had held her still while the tip had tapped at the hand holding the flashlight. She'd braced herself, more out of sheer surprise than conscious thought, but when it expressed more interest in the light than dragging her into the tank, she had let go of the neon orange tube. It had wrapped around the little torch, retracted from her person in a swift doubled twist and pulled back into its own tank to inspect the new acquisition.

The tube had spent approximately 15 seconds in the Eslop's mouth, the light flickering a few times from within the orifice and then dying, before it had decided it wasn't edible and had reverted to playing with it instead. It would lift it up above the water surface, drop it, and watch it splash down and sink down to the bottom, over and over. By the time the other startled lab tech (who had screamed and scurried off for help as soon as the tentacle grabbed Casey) had returned with a panicked Dr Lessik, the Eslop had begun trying to catch the thin black tube as it sank. Casey had simply stayed where she was, watching as the creature progressed through various stages of playing. Lessik had ordered her out of the tank before he and another scientist climbed in and up, quickly closing off the Eslop tank's grid cover as it should have been.

Despite her reassurances that she was perfectly fine, Dr Lessik insisted that she needed to go to the infirmary for a check-up. They'd headed for the door only to be stopped by a loud clatter from the Eslop tank. Her flashlight lay rolling on the floor just in front of the tank; the tip of a purple tentacle near the grid betrayed the cause: it had pushed the tube through a gap in the tank cover and out onto the floor. She'd walked back to the tank to retrieve it, and when she made to take it away the Eslop had thudded a few tentacles against the tank near her. It had wiggled it's multiple arms around in the same manner it had when it was trying to catch the tube, with what she could swear was an expectant look in its eyes. Without thinking too hard about it, she'd aimed for a back corner of the grid cover and had tossed the flashlight into the air. It bounced through the grating and plopped back into the water. The neon purple squid had gone after it like a flash, catching the little tube before it could hit bottom.

Dr Lessik had been delighted, especially when the tube was once again pushed out through the grid to land on the floor of the lab. He'd taken the second throw, and again, the Eslop had darted off through the water to catch the neon orange plastic tube before it could touch the bottom of the tank. It wasn't very heavy and sank slowly so the Eslop had plenty of time to get to it. The lab burst into a hive of activity, then, to set up recording equipment and devise parameters for the official 'independent play discovery' behavioural experiment. Lessik had ordered her to the infirmary for the check-up anyway. By the time she had returned, roughly an hour later, the flashlight (batteries removed and filled with weights instead) was officially a permanent "fetch" toy in the Eslop's tank.

It was one of several ocean-dwelling species which had been washed into the lower levels of the city during the Genii invasion storm the previous year and it had been generally content to remain in the city. If she'd filed a complaint, Lessik would have had his research curtailed. The Eslop was seemingly friendly and kinda cute (even with gooey purple tentacles) and had proved to be an interesting and cooperative study subject for many in Xeno, so she'd left the matter be. Besides, what would she have written in her report? _"Negligence in laboratory protocols resulting in soggy assault and minor larceny by purple space squid_ "? Nah, this was Pegasus. Weirder stuff happened on a daily basis. Despite having missed the majority of the scientific part of recording the discovery, Dr Lessik had insisted she be first author on the resulting research paper.

* * *

She grinned as the feel of the new flashlight in her hand triggered that humourous memory. The beam cuts through the darkness and as she begins to make her way towards the landing she hears a soft scuffling, like footsteps. It's probably someone else from the labs who got caught in the blackout as well. She swings her little torch around to find them, calling out a _Hello,_ but there's nobody in the stairwell behind her or above her. She steps onto the landing and shines her light down the corridor but again, there's still nobody around. _Hello?_ She tries again, and is met with silence once more. Something doesn't feel right, so she decides to double-time it to the secure zone. As she turns back to the stairwell there's a flash of yellow, something moving, blue and black, and before she can scream she is yanked backwards and sideways.

Her flashlight spins away from her, down the corridor, slapped out of her hand in the second or so before her forehead smacks against the wall. She's falling, stunned, and there's suddenly someone leaning over her, grabbing her, touching her. She kicks out wildly and her foot connects but it's a feeble attempt. The figure barely reacts to the kick; instead it yanks her about on the ground and holds her down with its own weight. Pinned and unable to move, she tries to punch her attacker in the face but earns herself a backhand to the jaw instead. Now her arms are both pinned down as well.

She freezes as the figure lowers its face down towards her. In the dim light cast from her flashlight further down the hallway she immediately recognises... Colonel Sheppard? Except it's not quite Colonel Sheppard either. The distinctive wild hair, lean figure, black clothes are all him, but the blue skin and the eyes... Shit. He leans in close to her, but he isn't looking at her. Instead, he's… sniffing her? What?

She has a few moments to register this fact and process through her terror that it's a downright creepy thing to be doing, and that's over and above the fact that he's _blue and scaly with lizard eyes_. The moment doesn't last long though, as he's off her in a flash, yanking her up and dragging her along the corridor back to the stairwell. He half-throws her down the stairs, stopping her fall by yanking on her hair, and flinging her about like a sack of potatoes by the straps on the back of her dungarees.

Another 2 levels down they exit the stairwell and round the corner so abruptly that he sends her tumbling head first into the wall. He hauls her up again and yanks/drags her down the corridor towards the transporter. The transporter! Sheppard is gripping her partly by her shirt, but most of his clawed hand is holding onto the strap of her bag. This is her chance! She has to try.

She gathers herself, waits until they're near the atrium and then throws herself with all her might backwards and away from him, twisting so that the strap goes over her head. Her shirt gets a bit ripped along the shoulder from his claws, but the tactic is successful and she manages to slip out of his grasp and scramble away. He's left with just her bag and she glances over her shoulder as she throws herself towards the open transporter. She doesn't make it four steps before Sheppard is on her.

He has her again, this time with both arms pinned behind her back and her face on the floor, inches from the closed door of the transporter. Of course he could override the transporter, will it closed and block off her escape. He cracks the back of her head with an elbow and digs a knee into the small of her back, before pinning her down with his entire body. She can't move at all. She doesn't want to try. His weight shifts slightly, and over the pounding of her own heart she can hear him right by her ears, her neck, breathing heavily.

He's smelling her again and it's no less creepy or terrifying than the time before. She's aching from being tossed around and he doesn't seem to be out to kill her. A part of her gives in, and this time when he lifts himself off her and drags her up, she doesn't fight back. Blood is dripping down her face from somewhere on her forehead, warm and sticky, but other than that she's still mostly intact.

All her energy and focus goes towards keeping her feet under her as much as possible as Sheppard drags her along corridors and down a lot more stairs (ouch) at a crazy pace for a good 15 minutes or so. The lights dim everywhere they go, and turn back on after they've passed by. She trips and staggers several times, and each time is rewarded by being smacked against something or being yanked about. The blood is starting to crust on her face, and she assumes it's stopped bleeding at least.

She gets the message loud and clear: don't try to escape again. The corridors have turned that odd green colour and have a bit of a damp smell to them when they finally round a corner, go up a short passageway and she gets shoved through a doorway. The floor beyond the doorway ends abruptly, a dark hole looming instead. There's no hesitation from Sheppard as he takes a firm grip on her and steps off the edge, into the darkness.


	3. Adquīrō

_A/N: Warning for sensitive content - dubious consent, violent sexual situation._

* * *

 **Adquīrō** (Verb, [ad-kwi-ro]): to acquire; to obtain; take; to claim; to take possession of.

* * *

Sheppard finally lets go of her in a deep pit of a room, filled with some old dead consoles and tables. The lower door is sealed shut, rusted by the ocean water, and there's only one dim wall sconce illuminating the space. Everything has that pale green-grey look indicating the room had been previously flooded; a section of the ceiling had collapsed and been washed away. That's how they got in, Sheppard dropping down from the level above and pretty much just pulling her down with him.

The landing had jarred her legs something nasty and knocked the wind out of her for a bit. The only way out was back through the hole in the ceiling. She could climb out, but there's no chance with Sheppard around. After dropping her in the far corner of the room he scales the wall and back up through the gap like it's nothing and briefly disappears. She barely has time to drag herself upright, recover her breath, and take a look around before he's back on top of her, invading her personal space.

He's all over her, intimidating her, hissing and pawing and growling. She tries to back away, shove him off, yell at him to leave her alone but nothing seems to help. Eventually he pins her against a wall, one arm twisted behind her back. She freezes again as he presses himself up against her back, his face right up next to hers. More sniffing, maybe? Instead, Sheppard's tongue darts out and he licks the blood off the side of her face, from her chin up to her temple.

She officially goes from scared and creeped out to downright terrified and grossed out, but at the same time the scientist in her is fascinated by his behaviour. She can't help it - she's a Xenobiologist. Her mind automatically categorises and analyses his actions. Every attempt at fighting back or getting away has just gotten her more hurt, and made Sheppard more angry.

He's sniffed her, pinned her, dragged her around. He doesn't seem to be interested in killing her, but he has no problem with hurting her. He's abducted her away to somewhere secluded and dark. They're alone. Oh crap. They're alone, far away from everyone, and now he's tasting her. Pinned to the wall, she theorises that his actions are that of an alpha male trying to assert his control, to show dominance over her. Hopefully that's all it is. They don't know much about the Iratus bugs... actually, they don't know anything other than their feeding similarity to the Wraith, so she can only speculate as she observes.

As she stands there, frozen, Sheppard rubs his inner arm and the underside of his chin against her in various places. She twitches, and he hisses viciously in her ear. Yep. His behaviour leads her back to the same conclusion. If she fights or tries to run, he'll hurt her more, and it will probably kill her. Or… or she can submit to his dominance. She's not sure where that will lead (she has an idea, a bad idea), but she definitely doesn't want to die so the logical, scientific part of her makes the decision: she submits. But how can she show her submission, pinned up against a wall, unable to move? He clearly isn't listening to words any more, isn't lucid in the human sense. Not human. Animal. Oh! She desperately latches onto the concept.

She forces herself to relax in his grip, and, for lack of a better option, (she can't twist or move far enough to bow or show her stomach) she tilts her head sideways, up and back, exposing her throat to him. Slowly, he releases his tight grip on her twisted arm, and leans into her throat, sniffing her again and rubbing his chin up and down her throat. She holds herself still, even when he nips her neck to test her submission. His clawed hands are dangerously sharp and long and very near her throat.

He eventually bites down, quite hard, on her shoulder near her neck, and she yelps, but remembers just in time not to pull away. He doesn't break skin, thankfully, but it's another source of pain on top of her already throbbing temple, bruised cheek, split lip, bruised arms and legs, and likely sprained wrist. If it weren't for the solid rubber of her watertight dungarees she would probably have lost the skin on her shins and knees by now too.

A few tense, painful seconds pass before Sheppard is satisfied that she's truly submitted to him. He lets her go and turns away, and she slumps to the floor, leaning forward to rest her forehead against the wall. The relief, the hope, is short-lived when less than a minute later Sheppard turns back, hauls her up by the throat, spins her around and yanks at her dungarees. He's staring her straight in the eyes, and he hisses and yanks again, his long claws ripping a vertical gash through the rubber suit over her stomach. She knows, then and there, that Sheppard intends to have her.

It's in line with the behaviour he's been exhibiting, even if she had hoped it wouldn't actually happen. But it is, and she knows she has no choice but to submit if she wants to survive. Not breaking eye contact from his intense stare, she lifts her shaking arms to unclip the rubber dungarees she was wearing and they slide off. Moving carefully and slowly, she steps out of them, now barefoot, and unfastens the button on the swimming shorts she had been wearing underneath.

Before she can take them off, Sheppard is yanking them and her underwear down, and they end up on the floor as he drags her partly across the room, spins her around again, and bends her over one of the tables. Her instinctive flailing earn her a head-slam into the tabletop and her already sprained left arm is twisted up behind her back. Sheppard claims her, then, and her hips, thighs and stomach are set afire as she gets slammed into the edge of the table repeatedly.

His grip on her wrist is agony but crying out seems to make him angrier, rougher. She covers her mouth with her right hand, scrunches her eyes shut, and remembers to just breathe, breathe, breathe. She can't help it, the pain grows and eventually a scream escapes; It's rewarded by a sickening crack from her pinned left arm as Sheppard crushes it with his grip. The pain from the break floods her mind, combining with all the other hurt, and rapidly overwhelms her.

She feels Sheppard slamming her into the table one more time before the darkness takes her away.


	4. Perīculum

_A/N: Okay, the dark & nasty part is over. We now return to our regular schedule of action, drama and humour. Coming up: a short chapter filled with bad decisions, statistical improbabilities, and bribery. Oh, and please remember that reviews are my oxygen. Even just a smiley face, or a yay/nay will do. Real words are nice, though.  
_

* * *

 **Perīculum** (Noun, [peh-ri-ku-lum]): peril; danger; adventure; hazard; action; risk; attempt.

* * *

Three hours of manual searching with LSDs have yielded nothing, and not even Ronon has been able to pick up on Sheppard's trail. There's just too much potential ground to cover, and too little evidence to follow. Finally, McKay radios in from the control room that his adjustments to the medical-sample-enhanced biometric sensor are complete.

All the search teams fall back to the control room for the briefing as McKay gets a lock on Sheppard, and Ronon grudgingly confirms that the rapidly moving dot is definitely the Colonel. Sore loser. Caldwell and Weir tussle for authority, and the search teams are secretly grateful that Weir's orders supercede Caldwell's. Nobody *wants* to kill their CO, especially not Sheppard. With a final grateful look, Teyla turns to join the search team.

They head out; behind them Caldwell yells at McKay when Sheppard unexpectedly uses a transporter.

* * *

Dr Ellingson pulled himself back to his feet using the wall for support. Sheppard had grabbed him and flung him out of the transporter as though he weighed nothing. The wall on the other end of the atrium had stopped his flight, hard. Ow. He glanced back, relieved to see that the transporter was empty. Sheppard was gone. He momentarily considered radioing in his encounter with Sheppard, but stopped himself with a hand halfway to his earpiece.

He wouldn't be able to tell them where the Colonel had transported to, and knowing that Sheppard had been in this particular tower wouldn't help much in catching him. It would also publicly reveal that he himself wasn't where he was supposed to be: in the safe zone with everybody else. He took a few deep breaths before pulling himself upright and continuing down the corridor to his destination.

* * *

Casey hadn't shown up in the safe zone during the roll call, wasn't answering her radio, and he knew she had been working on the aquaculture tanks in this tower when the the protocol was enacted. The security team guarding their safe zone had shrugged off his concerns, saying that she was probably in one of the other safe zones (there were seven) and he shouldn't worry. Apparently there were several scientists who had not responded to the safe zone protocol alert.

There always were - they didn't think "safety drills" were worth their time, or worth interrupting whatever experiment they were running. Short of a full-scale invasion or evacuation with self-destruct, there were always the stubborn few who skipped out. He'd tried to explain to them that Casey wasn't like that; she'd been scrubbing out smelly gunk-filled fish tanks, for goodness' sake! Who would skip out on a security protocol in favour of _that_?!

They'd simply shrugged and said they would pass it on, and she'd be retrieved and dealt with after the crisis was over. After that he'd radioed Major Lorne directly. Colonel Caldwell probably wouldn't care, but Major Lorne would. Even if he was busy, he would at least listen. He would understand. Lorne knew pretty much everyone in the city, even the scientists, and he would believe that Casey wasn't like that; believe that something was wrong. It had taken a little while and some begging and trading favours to get Major Lorne on the radio though.

The Major had been flung several meters through the air by a grenade's directed shock-wave on their attempt to get Iratus bug eggs for Colonel Sheppard's treatment. Two of his men had been killed as well, and even though he had walked himself back to the gate, he'd been admitted to the infirmary for observation. It had cost Ellingson two Snickers bars (and a promise to name one of his next "cool alien creatures" after someone's sister) to get a Marine stationed in the safe zone that included the infirmary to sneak his headset to where the Major lay under medical observation.

Major Lorne had listened. He had believed Ellingson when the Xeno doctor had explained that it was unlike Casey to ignore a security lock down. Lorne had promised to try to do whatever he could given that he was confined to an infirmary bed, without his own radio, with bruised ribs and a potential concussion, in the middle of an emergency situation, and with Colonel Caldwell able to supersede him in security matters. But he would try, he really would, he had promised. At the very least he would try to find out if Casey had reported into one of the other safe zones.

Ellingson had held little hope after his talk with the Major, and had spontaneously decided to do something about it himself. If nobody else was willing to look for Casey, he would. The chances of running into Colonel Sheppard in a city of this size were slim, especially if he headed straight to the tower where Casey had been working. He would go straight to the lab, find her, and bring her back to the safe zone. It would take him 15 minutes, tops, using the transporter. Yeah, the odds of running into Sheppard were miniscule, he'd reasoned. There were so many transporters on so many corridors on so many levels of so many towers of the city. He'd be quick. Get Casey, get back.

The security teams were watching for people trying to get into the safe zone, not for anybody trying to get out. It wasn't too hard to slip out into a side corridor and pop across a bridge to the next tower over where he could hop into a transporter. They might see him go, on the LSDs, if they were looking in this direction, but they wouldn't come after him. That would be against the protocol. Their job was to protect the civilians in their safe zone. He'd simply waited until the marine guarding his exit turned around for a moment, and had ducked out. The transporter doors had slid shut as he'd selected his destination, there was a flash, and then he was being flung through the air by a man-shaped blue & black blur. So much for minimal chances, then.

* * *

He picked up the pace as he headed for the stairwell that would take him down the three levels to the Aquaculture lab. If anything, running into Sheppard in the tower had cemented his belief that something was wrong, very wrong. He turned a last corner and came up short in front of the sealed door of the lab. He ran a hand over the sensor, but nothing happened. It was locked. _It's supposed to be locked_ , he reminded himself. That was the protocol. Maybe she was inside? That didn't make any sense.

The safe zone cluster security protocol had been specifically chosen _because_ Sheppard was involved. His ATA gene meant that he could get into any place in the city, even through most locked doors. A Sheppard-free protocol existed where staff were instructed to lock themselves inside their labs, making impromptu safe zones. In this instance, since Sheppard was the one causing trouble, locking yourself in your lab wouldn't do you much good if he decided he wanted in; they had thus been called to gather in the safe zones instead, guarded by armed security personnel.

He banged on the door anyway, and hollered a few times for good measure. Nothing. This type of lock down required the person who locked the room to be present to unlock it, unless senior staff authorised an override. He wouldn't be able to get in. If she was in there, then there was nothing he could do unless she opened the door, and if she wasn't opening the door then she probably wasn't in there. His plan wasn't going so well. There was no choice but to head back to the safe zone, and hope he didn't run into Sheppard again. This was Pegasus; statistics be damned.

He headed back to the transporter, opting for the one three levels down instead of going back up three flights of stairs. Scientists are inherently lazy and efficient - going down stairs is always better than going up, and he figures Casey may have done the same. He almost doesn't see it, except that as he gets closer to the transporter he gets more and more nervous about running into Sheppard again. He's going to have some grand shiners from the first encounter - he doesn't want more if he can avoid it. He's peeking into every dark recess as he goes, just in case the Colonel is lurking in the shadows, waiting to jump out at him again.

In the corner of a room, behind one of the water towers near the transporter atrium, he finds Casey's bag.


	5. Experior

_A/N: First evidence! Also, yes, I know, I'm skipping over Sheppard's recapture. If you want to re-live it, go watch the episode again. You know you want to see Ronon stun him. Du eet. Anyway, moving on: we finally get us some Lorne, some determined overachievers, surprisingly smart decisions, and lots of fuzzy blankets. To madwhiskey: \o/_ _:)_

* * *

 **Experior** (Verb, [eks-per-i-or]): to put to the test; try; attempt; experience; undergo; endure.

* * *

Lorne breathes out a quiet sigh of relief when Sheppard is wheeled back into the infirmary and taken through to the far wing. With the Colonel secured, the safe zone lock down can be ended. While he's greatly concerned about Sheppard's condition, he knows that it's beyond his control. The others will either figure it out, or they won't. He doesn't want to lose Sheppard; the past 24 hours under Caldwell had been remarkably taxing, and that includes the last five that he had spent lying in the infirmary, doing nothing.

He doesn't know if he would stay in Atlantis if Caldwell were to take over permanently. Still, he has to focus on what he **can** do right now. His ribs have been strapped up, he's been scanned three times to ensure he has no undetected internal injuries, he's been cleared of a concussion, and he's soaked up an entire IV of fluids to make Beckett happy. He's finally good to go. He has a lock down to end, civilians to reassure, security teams to debrief, and a very worried Dr Ellingson to deal with.

His headset chirps on the cabinet next to the bed and he gingerly leans over to grab it. It had been confiscated as part of the medical procedures, but now that he's on his way out it has finally been returned to him. A short but disturbing conversation later Lorne is rearranging his priorities. Sector Four has just reported back to him, the last to finish up the special roll call he requested; there's no Dr Cartwright in their zone. Finding Casey Cartwright has just become his number one task.

He slides off the examination bed gently and grabs his dusty jacket from the chair. His first call, while he dusts his jacket off, is to Colonel Caldwell to let him know that he's been released back to duty and will handle the ending of lock down procedure 11-B. His next call is on the lock down channel to all security personnel, advising of Sheppard's reacquisition and warning them to prepare for the imminent disassembly of the safe zones and the dispersal of all staff back to normal operating conditions at his next order. His third call is to the control room, asking the technician on duty at the life signs station to do a final sweep before he can allow the clusters in the safe zones to disperse.

It's standard procedure, to identify any outlying life signs and record their positions, and to perform a targeted scan for sub-q identification using the Daedalus if she's available. Combined with the roll call logs from the seven sectors, and physical checks on the life signs in question, they can verify who ignored the security protocol and take appropriate investigative and penalty actions later. When he asks the technician to do a special sweep of the Aquaculture lab area, there's no questions asked, just a promise to start the sweep in that zone and let him know if anything else comes up. That is one of the many things he would miss about Atlantis, if he left; most everyone here is good at what they do.

His fourth call is to Gunny Fricks, stationed in Safe Zone Two, ordering him to prepare to head to the Aquaculture lab to look for Dr Cartwright as soon as the lock down order is officially lifted. His conversation with the Gunny is interrupted by the control room technician - there's a single life sign in that tower, three levels down from the lab, heading towards the transporter atrium. He's about to tell the Gunny to intercept when Fricks, who had been listening in, informs him that Dr Ellingson had slipped out of the safe zone about 15 minutes before and it might well be him. Lorne sighs internally at that. He'll have to add Ellingson to the list of protocol breakers for that, and he knows that Caldwell is going to throw the book at the man. Lorne understands why Ellingson left - Colonel Sheppard has rubbed off on them all, scientists and military alike.

' _We don't leave our people behind'_ , he mutters softly to himself. Still, he orders the Gunny to exit the lock down zone on his special order, and to intercept the target; if it is Ellingson, Fricks is to proceed to the Aquaculture lab from there, with the Doc, to see if they can get an idea of where Cartwright may have disappeared off to. The Gunny is ' _already halfway there, Sir'_ , he reports, before signing off. Sigh. ' _Rebellious overachievers, the lot of them',_ Lorne grumbles under his breath as he straps his side arm back to his thigh and heads off to the control room to pick up the life signs logs.

* * *

The room was dark and stuffy when Casey came back to the world, leading her to wonder for a minute whether she had actually woken up or not. She was unexpectedly warm, and lying on something soft. What? Her confused mind tried to process this turn of events, because it was NOT what she had been expecting based on the events that had led her to pass out to begin with. She shifted, and immediately regretted it as the pain from her battered body came flooding back. Her head throbbed and her abdomen felt like it had been repeatedly mauled. More than anything else, though, her left arm screamed agony.

Breathing through the pain, she manages to push herself up into a sideways seated position. The softness underneath feels like... blankets? There are blankets tucked around her as well, and one of them slides off as she moves. Turns out the world isn't entirely dark after all. The blanket had just partially covered her head, and with the impediment gone she can see that the light is still low, but not entirely off. She's still in the corner of the sunken room, tucked away into what appears to be a nest of sorts. The loose tables and old soggy furniture that had previously been scattered around the room are arranged around her corner like a protective wall. There's no sign of Sheppard.

There's also no time to waste. This is her opportunity to get out, if she could just get herself extricated from the veritable cocoon of blankets she's wrapped in. It's soft and warm, but she can't stay. Once she's freed herself, she realises that it's probably the least of her problems. For starters, she's still naked from the waist down. It may be all the rage in Iratus-hybrid fashion choices, but she's going to need her pants. Then there's the wall surrounding her, the pit to get out of, and finding her way back to civilisation. With a broken left arm. All before Sheppard returns, and hopefully without running into him on the way. For all she knows he could be just outside the door. Hopefully the fact that she's now his mate will mean no more being thrown around or beat on. She won't know unless she runs into him again, though the cocoon of soft, fuzzy blankets is a hopeful sign. She briefly wonders where he got them, before focusing. One problem at a time.

She finds her shorts in the pile of blankets, as well as her rubber dungarees. It's difficult but not impossible to get them back on using just her right hand, but she has to fight back tears at the agonising ache ripping through her insides. She leaves the one dungaree clip undone. It's good enough. She tries shoving a part of the wall out of the way, but it's pretty darn heavy, so eventually she crouches down and crawls her way through the interlocking legs of several tables to the other side. It's progress, but it hurts. Everything hurts. Next up is getting up the wall. There's some broken pipes and such sticking out just above head height, but she realises pretty quickly that there's no way she's pulling herself up with one broken arm.

Eventually she drags one of the smaller old pieces of furniture from the impromptu defensive wall across the room to below the gap. Sliding onto it is an exercise in pain, reminding her that she could well have internal injuries she wasn't aware of. She goes slow, working her way to a sideways sitting position on the table-console-thing and then carefully standing up; It gives her the height she needs. She carefully steps up using one of the jutting pipes and gets her upper body over the ledge of the gap. It's agony, leaning over the edge on her stomach, but it's only for a few brief seconds as she gets her right leg up and over. With an arm and a leg she can lever herself up enough to bring her other leg up too, and from there it's almost easy to get herself to her feet. She's out the door and down the passageway before she remembers that she had been worried about Sheppard hiding out in that spot.

She just keeps walking.

* * *

The control room technician has already completed the sweep by the time he arrives.

If Lorne is surprised by the speed, he doesn't show it. He never shows it. Always calm, always cool - that's Major Lorne. Usually the sweep takes a good fifteen minutes, including the Deadalus' sub-Q scanning phase. Something either went wrong, or something is up. The technician grins at him, and Lorne knows he's going to like what he hears. He simply raises a brow at the technician, who hands him a tablet with the scan results so he can see for himself. Surprisingly, aside from Dr Ellingson who exited his safe zone, and the as-yet-unaccounted-for Dr Cartwright, there have been no other transgressors of the security protocol this time around. He shares a wry grin with the technician before handing the tablet back and heading out.

It would seem the science contingent have learnt that security protocols, especially ones meant to protect them from Sheppard, are a smart idea after all.


	6. Dēsum

_A/N: It's Stargate Sunday! Casey's out, somewhere in the city, and Lorne is on a mission to find her. Also, actual conversation! I wrote words for people to say out loud to each other!_

 _Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, liked and followed so far! It makes me super happy to see that there are people out there enjoying the story._

* * *

 **Dēsum** (Verb, [de-sum]): To be away; absent; missing; to miss; to feel the absence of someone or something.

* * *

Lorne isn't even five steps away from the control room when his radio chirps in his ear.

"Major Lorne?" It's Fricks, and his tone says that something is up, so Lorne stops.

"Go ahead, Gunny", Lorne sends back, keeping his tone neutral.

"I found Dr Ellingson, Sir. Transporter atrium, Level 11, Sector 8 Science Tower. He's fairly agitated." Fricks is succinct in his report, but Lorne simply waits. There's more coming.

"..We need a new plan, Sir. He found a bag in the atrium that he insists belongs to Dr Cartwright, and he says the Aquaculture lab is securely locked in accordance with the protocol." The gunny's voice is low and tinted with concern. "I took the liberty of checking the immediate vicinity, Sir, and I found what appears to be blood."

Lorne sighs internally. Things are going downhill fast. The fact that the Aquaculture lab is securely locked, combined with the bag and the blood all point to Cartwright having left the lab but never making it to the safe zone. He spins and heads back to the console in the control room.

"Copy that. Hold your position, Gunny. I'm sending reinforcements, and I'll be there shortly." The technician looks up as Lorne flips back to the security channel. "Mackie, Roux, report to Gunny Fricks in the Transporter Atrium, Level 11, Sector 8 Science Tower immediately."

He turns back to the control room technician who has been paying attention to his end of the conversation, and within seconds a targeted LSD sweep of the tower in question is up on the display. There's two life signs, still holding in the transporter atrium three levels below the Aquaculture lab, and as they watch two more pop up to join them. Nothing new, nothing else. They're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, then.

"On site and holding, Sir." Roux's voice echoes in his ear two seconds later.

"Copy that, I'll be there shortly." Lorne acknowledges. He turns to the technician seated beside him. "Please keep an eye on that sector and radio me if any individual signals pop up. Channel 11." The technician gives him a brisk nod and turns back to his work.

Lorne heads out, swinging by the ready room to grab a couple of extra LSDs as well as flashlights and a med kit. A few steps, two taps in the transporter, and in a flash he's at the atrium where his three marines are hovering around a very upset Dr Ellingson sitting on the floor.

Ellingson jumps to his feet the moment Lorne arrives, thrusting a bag in his direction.

"It's Casey's, Major, definitely!" he insists, pointing to a corner behind a bubbling water pillar where he had clearly found it lying. "It was behind the ballast pillar, tossed into the corner there!"

Lorne carefully takes the bag from the distraught scientist, immediately noting the partial rip on the long strap. Fricks jerks his head and Lorne follows him a little way down the corridor nearer the entrance to the stairwell. The blood smear on the wall is unmistakeable. They head back to where Dr Ellingson is nervously waiting with Mackie and Roux.

"...sneak out of a lock down again, Doc." Lorne catches the end of Mackie's soft sentence to the fidgeting scientist. The man in question looks up at Lorne's approach, a guilty look on his face. He clearly has something he wants to say, and Lorne, expecting an apology for contravening the security protocol, simply raises an eyebrow at him.

"Uhm..." The xenobiologist swallows, "..Colonel Sheppard was here. Earlier, I mean... about 20 minutes ago. In the transporter atrium, six levels up. He... left... as I arrived."

Lorne narrows his eyes at the Doctor.

"He.. uhh... tossed me out the transporter." Ellingson grimaces, and looks away. The fidgeting has stopped, and Lorne knows there's no more.

Lorne ponders the unexpected information. The news of Ellingson's little run-in with Sheppard six levels up at the transporter is… actually useful. The timing, specifically, helps. Since the blood in the corridor has definitely been there for a little while (it's pretty thoroughly dried out and darkened), it means that whatever had happened to Cartwright in this building, likely also a run in with Sheppard, had probably happened at around the start of the lock down several hours before… but Ellingson's encounter with Sheppard had not been that long before. Sheppard had transported away from this particular tower again just before his recent capture. By Ellingson's own admission, that had been roughly 20 minutes before.

For someone trying to avoid capture, it was rather suspicious that Sheppard would return to the same approximate location twice. It's either that, or, more likely, he had never really left. There's definitely got to be something around here, then, that had kept him in the area. But Lorne also knows (and another check on his LSD confirms it yet again) that there are only five life signs showing up in the tower. Ellingson, Mackie, Roux, Fricks and himself.

If Cartwright is still around, she's likely to be in a damaged lower section, then, where the sensors don't work and out of range of the LSD in his hand. He refuses to consider the alternative. They'll begin by the blood and do a point-by-point short-vicinity search, and hopefully find something. If not, they'll work their way downwards into the damaged sections. It's a plan, but he's going to need extra bodies to pull it off, not to mention he still has to officially clear the lock down.

A quick tap on his radio, and less than two minutes later he has another three marines headed his way, having officially lifted the security lock down and ordered the remaining teams to dismantle the safe zones and assist everyone in returning to normal operations. He also radios Colonel Caldwell to advise of the end of the lock down and that he is taking a team to track down a missing scientist. The Colonel simply authorises the search and requests that Lorne keep him informed before curtly signing off. Lorne slowly lets out a breath. He's used to dealing with Sheppard, who actually appreciates being informed, cares when people are missing, and doesn't act as though every little move his underlings make requires his authorisation and approval.

He hands off the three extra LSDs to Parris, Roux and, to the marines' surprise, to Ellingson. He keeps the last one for himself. He pairs them up, placing Ellingson with Mackie. The scientist gives him a grateful look at being included in the search, while the big burly marine gives him a sage nod. He's good at handling panicked scientists, and he knows it. He doesn't begrudge being assigned to the Doc, and Lorne knows he'll take good care of Ellingson. They've worked together off-world before, and Ellingson got along surprisingly well with the Sergeant. Mackie will keep him calm, bringing out his scientific and analytical side while keep the panicked human side in check. Groups established, he runs them all through a short sitrep, and issues brief instructions for the search. His guys are good; he doesn't have to micromanage them.

They split up into two teams and quickly check the full length of the corridor, as well as partway up and down the stairs for more blood or other indicators. Parris reports back from Level 13 with a waterproof yellow flashlight that Ellingson identifies as also belonging to Cartwright; moments later Roux calls out to Lorne and points out a few droplets of blood at the far end of the Level 11 hall near the next staircase over. Dr Cartwright's sealed Aquaculture lab is on Level 14; her flashlight was on Level 13; and the bag, blood smear, and droplets were on Level 11. Lorne surmises that the blood trail begins by the large smudge Fricks found, so the droplets are their best indicator of direction. They regroup by the smear on 11 and as one they head off down the corridor, 8 pairs of eyes scanning for blood or anything else out of the ordinary.

At the end of the corridor just beyond the droplets is another stairwell and they split up again. Half go up, half down, checking the immediate area around alternating landings until Mackie radios from the fifth floor down that they have something. More blood droplets, heading along the corridor. The trail seems to be leading them downwards. The lower levels beneath the Sector 8 Science Tower are amongst those with sodden tunnels and non-working sensors. Some of it is still unexplored, most of it is uninhabitable due to the flooding. The team regroups, following the trail along several twisting corridors; they repeat their short-vicinity point search pattern at the next stairwell.

The path is taking them steadily downwards until they find themselves several levels beneath the waterline, following diminishing splatters of red down damp green corridors. They reach another intersection and split up again, Mackie and Ellingson staying behind while the other 3 pairs scout down separate corridors. When all three teams reach their next intersection without finding any new clues, Lorne pulls out his LSD again to scan the area, as they all had been intermittently doing since the beginning of the exercise. Nothing. He and Roux turn around to head back towards the intersection where Mackie and Ellingson are waiting, re-scanning in case they missed something, and hoping for the radio to chirp with news of a discovery by one of the others.

Lorne's LSD chirps instead.


	7. Reparātus

_A/N: This chapter was one of the shortest, clocking in at just 800 words. Then it exploded, and now it's one of the biggest. I have no regrets, except for the additions not having been pre-authorised by my beta, Redtail53. You have been warned._ _ _Thank you for all the follows! I officially have more follows than reviews. It's a little weird, but I *think* it's a good thing? Is it?__

 _We now move on to the fun part of any whump story: hours of boredom in the infirmary, interspersed by interrogations that can't end quickly enough. Or not. In this chapter: death grips, marines armed with crayons, blanket forts, a sneaky yet honest Major, and bathroom graffiti without the bathrooms. Also, time moves faster.  
_

* * *

 **Reparātus ** (Perfect passive participle of **Repar** **ō,** Verb, [re-pa-ra-tus]): having been recovered **;** retrieved; reacquired; to repair; refresh.

* * *

Casey doesn't remember all that much about the events following her rescue. One moment she's wandering down a passageway, and the next she's in Major Lorne's arms, on the ground. Once she's down, there's no getting back up again. There was another pair of hands and a face she doesn't know, wielding a light and a first aid kit. Then there were others, and she's certain she can hear Ellingson's voice from some way away, blabbering worriedly. The hands she doesn't know are dealing with her left arm, and there's words about a splint, while another face is in her line of sight.. Parrish? No, that's the botanist. Paris? That's a city, but she thinks it's almost right. 'Paris' mutters something about head injuries, and then there was pain. The splinting hurts, it hurts a lot, and Major Lorne is on the radio to a doctor, the medical kind; Shortly thereafter there's a small sting and then a sweet coolness pumping through her veins, melting the pain away.

There's a stretcher, lots of moving, and Lorne is holding her hand, and she thinks that maybe it's not all that bad after all, because Lorne is *nice* and his hands are warm. She knows she's in the infirmary, and that Beckett is looking worriedly at her before chasing all the nurses and marines away and asking her some questions. She's floating on morphine, but when he asks her who did this to her she's lucid enough to keep her voice down as she calmly tells him that it was Colonel Sheppard. Beckett's face goes white when she informs him that he needs to do a gynaecological exam, but he absolutely cannot tell anyone, ever, because it wasn't really Sheppard, and it wasn't his fault.

She doesn't notice that Lorne is still standing next to the bed, and isn't aware that the only reason he hasn't left is because she hasn't been inclined to let go of his hand yet. It's more of a death grip, really, but after what she had just said, Lorne isn't sure whether she's holding onto his hand, or if he's holding onto hers.

* * *

There was sleeping, a lot of it, and more painkillers and a cast for her left arm. On the second day Carson comes by with a camera, and asks her for permission to document her external injuries. The outwardly visible physical assault is public knowledge, and protocol dictates that they have to record the full extent of her injuries. Dr. Weir also swings by to talk to her, and while she declines to talk about her experience, she makes it clear that she understands that Sheppard wasn't himself when he beat her up. Weir nods understandingly, seemingly relieved, and vanishes again. There's no pushing from anyone to talk about it after that.

Ellingson and a bunch of others from the labs also stop by to visit her, and she will forever blame the painkillers for her _"sure, why not"_ when they ask if they can sign her cast. All she can say is that Xenobiologists know a **lot** of dirty alien biology jokes and she may need to wash her eyes out after reading what they had immortalised on her plastered arm. Fricks, Roux, Mackie, Parris (she hadn't been that far off!) and the two other marines who joined the rescue mission also swing by to say hi. After brief introductions, they tell her that they have a present for her.

Apparently getting beat on by Sheppard in the line of duty grants her membership to some exclusive club, and they present her with a little cardboard-and-crayon sign indicating her lifetime rights of access. She's not a Marine, not even military, but they've voted in the ranks and have granted her a special civilian's dispensation, mostly because she had "essentially rescued herself". It's hilarious and sweet. The raucous crowd and all the laughter draws Beckett's attention, and the group get evicted from the infirmary in short order. Parris rather cheekily informs Beckett that if he would just let her out of the infirmary, they wouldn't have to come cause their ruckus in his place of healing. After all, it's just a broken arm and some bruises, and she's a tough cookie, right?

They promise to be back though, much to the Scotsman's ire and he tosses them out without rebuttal. When she asks Carson why it is that he's keeping her, he quietly explains that he needs to be completely certain this time. They had missed Sheppard's initial infection, and he'd had direct blood exposure. He doesn't want to assume that she's clear - after all, there _was_ a fluid exchange - delayed transmission of the retrovirus might take a bit longer to manifest. The good doctor looks extremely flustered by everything that happened. She can't deny that having no demands beyond taking her meds, eating her food, and all the naps she wants is rather nice given how achy her body is. So, she stays without complaint.

The most interesting part of it all though, is the fact that Major Lorne pops in to check on her at least twice a day, which is super sweet of him. She'd only really dealt with him in passing before now, so she's not sure why he's taken it upon himself to be her most frequent visitor. Lorne's face scrunches up into an odd expression she can't interpret the first time she asks him how Colonel Sheppard is doing. She's been checked and triple checked for retrovirus infection from her encounter with the Colonel, and so far everything seems clear, but nobody in the infirmary is willing to tell her anything else.

Since she knows exactly how she's doing so far, she wants to know how Sheppard is. After all, it wasn't really him, and she'd prefer to have Sheppard back in human form as much as everyone else does. For a moment she's worried that Lorne will decline like everyone else, but instead he takes a breath and doesn't try to avoid the topic. He answers her questions as best he can. Since she doesn't seem inclined to stop asking after the Colonel, he relents and routinely keeps her updated on Sheppard's slow transformation back to human with every subsequent visit.

He never bothers her about what happened to her, merely asks her every time if she's still surviving the infirmary's food. She can tell he wants to know, though, needs to know more, and on the evening of the third day she works up the courage to talk about what transpired. She tells him, without the graphic details, about Sheppard grabbing her, the escape attempt, taking her to the cave-room, passing out when he broke her arm and then waking up later in what probably amounts to the Iratus version of a blanket fort.

Lorne doesn't comment during her story. He doesn't offer sympathy, or platitudes. He simply listens, and even grants her a little grin at the 'blanket fort' crack. When she's done, there's a few moments of silence as he contemplates what she had told him. And then he proceeds to tell her about the missions to the Iratus cave, about losing two of his team to the bugs, and about how & where they eventually caught Sheppard. He briefly explains the whole 'pheremone' concept that Beckett had come up with, and that they had sent a lucid-but-only-for-a-while-Sheppard back into the cave to retrieve the eggs himself. Casey can't help but nod in agreement at the plan.

It really was quite an inspired idea, especially in light of her own behavioural observations. Beckett hadn't had nearly as much to go on as she had, and she hadn't stopped to think about pheremones. Well, except for the chin rubbing - that was classical animal scent marking. When Lorne's done with his story, Casey feels surprisingly okay. They trade questions, then, discussing the various events on both sides but keeping it light. There's no judgement from the Major, and she's so drawn in by his own shared experience that she doesn't even realise it was a debrief until after Lorne is long gone and she's settling down to sleep.

She thinks she should be angry, but it's Lorne, and he was just so gosh darned nice about it. And he had reciprocated, so there wasn't any embarrassment. He had made it so easy. Sure, she hadn't told him everything, but she had told him enough. She's not sure she'll ever tell anyone about the other stuff. Only Doctor Beckett knows, and he'll keep his promise to never say a word. She drifts off to sleep feeling rather relieved.

* * *

Another unexpected visitor comes to see her the next morning: Teyla. Casey's only met her twice in passing, and never really spoken directly with her, so she's surprised when the Athosian shows up at her bed to check up on her. Teyla has a reputation for being fair, calm, wise and warm... and a total bad-ass that not even the marines will mess with. Casey is thrilled to discover that she's extremely friendly, genuine, and easy to talk to. At Casey's request, she recounts the story of how they caught Sheppard. If she finds Casey's various questions about his behaviour odd, she doesn't mention it.

Late afternoon on day 4 she gets her walking papers, and Lorne shows up to escort her back to her quarters. Beckett is happy with the healing progress of her broken arm, as well as the various tissue damage. He also quietly informs her that after four days of thrice-daily blood panels, he is certain that there was no retrovirus transmission. Beckett seems immensely relieved to be able to tell her that, so she thanks him. He reminds her of her follow-up appointments and then orders the Major to make sure that she keeps taking her daily medication before vanishing off to the back where Sheppard is still sequestered.

Lorne eyes her as they walk back to the residence halls, and wryly asks if he's going to really need to pester her to take her meds every day. She grins and reassures him that she fully intends to take every last one of them. Lorne ponders for a moment, then informs her that he's more than a little afraid of Beckett and promptly insists they get together at least once a day so he can truthfully say he's been doing his job. She laughingly agrees, not expecting the military XO of Atlantis to really make the time to see her every day for 5 minutes. He leaves her at her quarters and she delightedly treats herself to a lovely long soak in the bath before flopping into bed and calling it an early night.

To her surprise, Lorne meets her every morning for breakfast, and seems to coincidentally be in the infirmary whenever she stops by for her a check-up with Beckett. Surprisingly, Dr Heightmeyer, the expedition shrink, leaves her alone. After a whole week of Lorne's reassuring and friendly presence she invites him to join her for lunch in her room; there, she sits him down and gives him her scientific assessment of Sheppard's actions.

She doesn't know why she does it, but she tells him everything, straight up, from a clinical and analytical perspective. He listens quietly to it all without interrupting or questioning. There's a raised brow at the sniffing, a thoughtful look at the neck submission thing, and a tensed jaw at the claiming. It's only when she's finished with her entire story that he takes a deep breath, looks her in the eye and admits to having been in the infirmary with her when she requested Dr Beckett perform the exam nobody else knows about.

He'd known all along.

She can't think of anything to say. He was the only other person on the entire base, besides Beckett, who knew the truth about what had happened to her in that room. Suddenly his regular visits and odd expression when she'd asked about Sheppard made perfect sense to her. He was genuinely worried about her well-being; about her experience at the hands of his CO whilst he wasn't himself. She wants to be upset, but again, she just can't find any good reasons to be. Especially not with him. She had made the choice to tell him, so did it really matter that he had already known? He had earned her trust, so why shouldn't it apply retroactively?

"Thank you".

Lorne had been quietly waiting for her to process his admission, but he probably hadn't been expecting her to say... that.

"For telling me the truth." she clarifies, when he doesn't say anything. "You didn't have to. I would never have known."

"Trust is a two-way street." is his only response. There's a few moments of silence in the room. Lorne's usual neutral expression is firmly in place, but Casey can see the worry in his eyes.

"I'm going to be fine, Major." Lorne seems dubious, but he's not giving much away, as usual. There's that quiet again, so Casey throws him a cheerful smile and changes the topic. "Doctor Beckett says I can go back to work tomorrow, _finally_ , but no mucking out wet tanks until the cast comes off." She waves the brightly decorated white plaster in the air.

After Xeno-everyone had gotten their hands on it, Fricks and Parris had insisted the marine team be allowed to sign too, and now she had a cast which she was pretty sure could out-skank even the bathroom graffiti in the worst sort of dingy dive bar imaginable. It was just missing one crucial thing.

"Wanna sign my cast?"


	8. Spīrāre

_A/N: It's Stargate Sunday again! We're officially past the halfway point, and everything is fine. Yup. Just fine. No, really. Casey's fine. Sheppard's always fine. _

_Lorne is not fine._

 _In this chapter : Casey doesn't breath. Sheppard breathes too much. Beckett is flustered. Lorne glares. Oh, and the city might be eaten by bugs. Everything is just fine.  
_

* * *

 **Spīrāre** (Noun and Verb, present infinitive of **Spīrō** [spi-ra-reh]): a breath; inhalation; to draw in a breath; to respire; to breath.

* * *

Four and a half weeks after _T_ _he Incident_ , as she's taken to calling it, Casey is down in one of the new Level 4 labs trying to figure out how they can set up and cycle the nutrient feed lines most effectively between a series of large, immovable aquaculture tanks when suddenly Sheppard is there.

In the room.

With her.

 _Alone in the room with her._

She tries her hardest not to panic, and is mostly successful only because Sheppard isn't blue any more. He looks like a normal human again... And he isn't touching her. He keeps his distance, and she keeps her calm. Mostly.

Maybe.

He's trying to say something, but it isn't working very well. There's a lot of shuffling, hands in his pockets, and scuffing at an invisible spot on the floor with his shoe, and rubbing at the back of his neck, and she thinks he's saying words in her general direction. Maybe it's her ears that aren't working well. She's not sure. She has to remember how to breathe, first.

He's wearing jeans and a blue shirt. He looks... normal. She manages a breath, and then another, and gradually the panic subsides just enough for the tight band across her chest to loosen. Sheppard has stopped speaking and is looking at her with an expression that's alternating between concern and guilt. He can tell he's making her uncomfortable, has made her panic. He takes a hesitant half-twist-step backwards, and he looks like he's about to bolt. She has no problem with him leaving. Really. _Please please please go away_ her mind is quietly screaming. _Calm down, he's himself again, he won't hurt you_ her brain is saying rationally.

He takes a deep breath, somewhat resignedly, and another half a step back... and stops. An odd look she can't decipher crosses his face, and he turns to stare straight at her.

She stares back. Five long, rapid strides later Sheppard has crossed the lab; he steps right up to her, eyes still locked with hers, and... _sniffs_ at her.

They're both surprised by that, and just stare at each other uncomprehendingly until Sheppard deliberately leans forward, closes his eyes, and _breathes_ her in. He pulls back, startled, and Casey is back to being frozen again. His eyes jerk back to hers, and he blurts out the words that make immediate sense to her.

"You smell... pregnant."

* * *

It's becoming harder to maintain his calm façade as he checks the main Xeno lab and there's still no sign of Casey.

 _Damn it_.

He has to find her, and quickly. Unobtrusively. He strides purposefully down to the lab on the level below. It's empty.

 _Crap._

Maybe one of the other Xeno team can tell him where she's supposed to be. He heads back up to the lab to where Dr Ellingson is staring at something under a microscope.

"Hey Doc," he keeps his tone casual. Ellingson swivels around and grins widely at seeing him.

"Major! Come take a look at this! We've discovered a complex aquatic extremophilic organism which appears to have the ability to eat metal! It's incredible! You have to see this!" He waves a furious hand at the equipment spread out before him on the lab table.

"I was actually just wondering if you..." Wait. _What_? That doesn't sound safe.

"What do you mean, 'eat metal'?" he asks, warily.

Atlantis is made of metal, and floats on the ocean. Things that _eat metal_ and live in the _water_ would be bad. _Very bad_.

"It's similar in size and appearance to a Tardigrade, except for the ability to eat metal. Well, not so much _eat_ as... _assimilate_ and convert metallic compounds into other molecular forms depending on the pH level of the basal fluid! It's amazing, really! Did you know that Tardigrades can survive extreme heat, cold and radiation? And even the vacuum of space? I'd venture these little metallophagii have similar resistances. Remarkable!" The excited xenobiologist rattled off as he plastered his eyes back to the microscope in front of him.

Lorne blinked. Yeah. _Metal-eating indestructible water-based organisms_. Who the hell authorised bringing these samples to _Atlantis_? It's a serious risk to the safety of the city, and as acting Military Commander in Sheppard's absence, he'll have to take it up with McKay, make sure they've got proper containment protocols in place to prevent... No. Wait. _Sheppard. Casey_. _Focus_!

"Do you know where Doctor Cartwright is working today?" he asks with a calm he's definitely not feeling on the inside. He can worry about Atlantis being eaten by invincible waterbugs later.

"Hmm?.. Oh, yes, umm... She's on the.. err.. nutrient feed line project. Umm..." Ellingson doesn't look away from his scope. "The Aquaculture team is trying out a new bacterial-based closed-loop hydroponics system... trying to establish a symbiotically enhanced growth cycle between the sea-spinach-root from Indarhama and those squidfish things from P7M-841!"

Lorne has to fight not to roll his eyes as Ellingson segues again, without telling him what he wants to know.

"And where is the..."

Lorne is interrupted by a triple chirp from his radio.

* * *

There's nothing but silence in the lab, and Sheppard looks stunned at his own outburst.

She feels… remarkably calm, considering. 15 seconds earlier he had been across the room and she had been frozen in fear, unable to breathe. Now he's standing _right there_ in her personal space, close enough to reach out and touch, and all she can think is that it's _fascinating_ , really, that Sheppard can still scent her, after all this time.

Pregnant?

 _Pregnant..._ she _has_ felt rather odd for the past three weeks, but she had been unable to put her finger on what exactly was wrong, and had just attributed it to her body slowly healing all over. Most of the bruises are completely gone, and the last smattering of stitches had been taken out the previous week... but.. _pregnant._

So many things made sense now.

 _Pregnant._

Sheppard is still right in front of her, staring at her like a frozen deer in headlights. Casey lifts her hand to her headset, and the motion seems to awaken him to the fact that he's standing less than a foot away from her because he promptly backs off to a more reasonable distance as quickly as he had arrived.

"Control Room, this is Dr Cartwright, come in please?" her voice is steady and neutral, and Sheppard looks momentarily panicked.

"This is control, go ahead Dr Cartwright." the friendly technician's voice chirps professionally in her ear.

"Could you please connect me to Major Lorne on a private channel?" She doesn't want to hail the Major on an open line. Fortunately, private channel requests are allowed via control. Sheppard has been slowly backing towards the open doorway, but at hearing who and what she requests, he stops. There's the distinctive triple click that indicates the transfer is being connected, and moments later another triple click precedes the opening of the channel.

"This is Lorne, go ahead."

"Major, it's Dr Cartwright." Casey keeps it professional even though it's a private channel. "Are you busy right now?"

"I was actually _just_ looking for you, Doc." Lorne's tone is close to neutral, but there's an edge to it that she can't quite decipher.

"I'm working in one of the new Level Four Aquaculture labs," she answers his unasked question, "but I was wondering if you could meet me in the Infirmary in... ten minutes?"

"Absolutely, Doc." Lorne's response is immediate. "I'll be there in ten." His tone is still neutral, but his clip betrays the worry in his voice.

"Thank you, Major." she tries to reassure him that she's not in immediate danger. She ends the connection. Sheppard is still hovering just inside the doorway, just watching her. She taps her radio again.

"Doctor Cartwright to Doctor Beckett, come in please?" Calls directed to Beckett are initially public, but as soon as he picks up the call it automatically switches to a private channel. It's a confidentiality protocol, one that she's extremely grateful for. The radio clicks three times and the Scottish doctor's brogue fills her ear.

"Aye lass, what can I do fer ye?"

"Doctor Beckett, I need to see you. Are you available in about ten minutes? It shouldn't take long but it is rather urgent." She has a bit of a plaintive tone, but she has to see Carson and she has to see him as soon as possible.

"I'm in mah office, love, I'll be here waiting." Good, okay, that's good. She's got Lorne, and she's got Beckett. Two down, one to... go. Away, preferably. But she has to ask, especially since as soon as she reports this to Beckett he's going to call the Colonel in anyway. She's pretty sure Sheppard isn't supposed to still be able to smell things. He's back to human, right? _Focus_. _Breathe_.

Sheppard watches her as she walks towards him. He still looks like he's not sure whether he wants to flee or... well, not flee. He doesn't move though, and lets her approach him.

"Would you prefer it if I did this alone?" she asks quietly. He has to have the choice. She didn't, and he was as much a victim as she was. It's important that they have choice, now. He considers her words with a grimace, and then, surprisingly, shakes his head.

"No." he says, hoarsely. "I need to... "

She simply waits, quietly, as he trails off and struggles to find words.

"No." he eventually repeats, and that's that.

She takes a deep breath, and nods at him, then gestures for him to precede her.

They walk to the infirmary in silence.

* * *

Lorne makes it to the Infirmary in 7 long minutes, walking at a leisurely but purposeful pace to avoid drawing unwanted attention. He heads straight through to Beckett's office. Casey didn't specify where, but if she's coming in then she's likely heading to see Carson. The Scottish doctor blinks up at him when he appears in the doorway.

"Casey asked me to meet her here." he explains in lieu of a greeting.

"Ah" is all he gets in response. There's no need for small talk or polite niceties between them, especially when it comes to Casey. The events of the past few weeks have led to both of them developing quite the protective streak regarding the seemingly eternally cheerful and optimistic Xenobiologist. Well, Beckett tended to get that way with all his patients, and Lorne had the security and well-being of everyone in Atlantis in his purview as military XO... but this was different. This was Casey... and Sheppard, and the retrovirus, and horrible events that had resulted from failures on both his and Carson's parts.

He settles himself against a lab bench at the far end of the office. He's apprehensive and worried, but to the casual observer he would appear casual and relaxed. He's picked up a few things from Sheppard in the last few months, one of them being how to look like he's more relaxed than he really is. Sheppard has it down to an art form, though, melting languidly into chairs and against walls as though he were perpetually bored or on vacation.

Movement at the door draws his attention, and he has to call on his best poker face to hide his surprise when Sheppard steps into the office. The Colonel only gives him a momentary glance before looking away. Lorne doesn't. He can't. His eyes are locked on Sheppard, who is studiously avoiding looking back at his glaring XO.

Casey steps in right behind Sheppard.

 _Uh oh._

It seems Sheppard managed to find her first after all. Sometimes his CO could be an impulsive asshat. Lorne had tried to stop him, had told him that the _last_ thing he should do was confront Casey, but the man clearly hadn't seen reason. He'd gone straight for her, and now they were meeting in the Infirmary. His stomach is turning cold. _What the hell did you do, Sir?_

Beckett is also giving the Sheppard-Cartwright combination a wary look, and he shoots Lorne a warning glance as Casey waves her hand over the sensor to close the door behind them. Sheppard appears to be attempting to merge with the wall in the corner of the room, and Casey ignores him and steps right up to Beckett.

"What's up, love?" Carson switches to doctor mode immediately.

Casey takes a deep breath, and casts a sideways glance at the Colonel. He crosses his arms over his chest, and stands up a little straighter. Lorne eyes him suspiciously. Something odd is going on here.

"I need you to do a pregnancy test."

Lorne's stomach turns to ice.

* * *

Casey tries not to look down as Beckett fiddles with the phlebotomy kit.

It has nothing to do with the blood sample the doctor is taking from her right arm, and everything to do with the fact that Sheppard is holding her hand. He had incrementally hovered closer and closer to her as Beckett had prepared for the draw. When Beckett turned back with the needle in his gloved hand, Sheppard had simply reached out and gripped her hand. Behind them, Lorne had made a choked sound, quickly followed up by a cough. She wasn't panicking. She wasn't, really. Instead, she desperately tries to profile, to find some reasoning or justification for everything that happened in the last 20-odd minutes. Unfortunately, Casey knows animals, not humans. Human behaviour is a whole different kettle of fish. Or, she wishes it was, because fish she could probably understand too. But people? And not just any people, but specifically Colonel Sheppard, the eternal enigma?

She can't profile him. She's distracted, anyway, by the hand gripping her own as Beckett takes the sample. His hands are cool, but not cold or clammy. His fingers are long and lean. Nothing like Major Lorne's warm, solid hands. It's awkward as hell, but he doesn't seem inclined to let go, so she leaves it alone and focuses on just taking the next breath. Beckett pats her on the arm briefly before he disappears out of the office to process the samples.

Lorne stays, thankfully, settling himself back against the table off to the side. He alternates between eyeing her, eyeing Sheppard, and frowning at their joined hands. Silence reigns. Casey just keeps focusing on a spot on the wall above the doctor's desk.

Beckett is back less than five minutes later, looking a little flustered. He simply nods, and gives it a few seconds for the news to sink in.

"What would ye like tae do, love?"

* * *

 _TBC!_

 _Good news everyone! This chapter exploded so much (1,100 words to 4,500) that I ended up breaking it into two parts (2,600 and the other around 1,900). More story for you, but also more waiting! *evil laughter* Instinct will thus have 14 chapters in total. I'm pretty sure none of the other chapters will explode, since there's much talky-talky coming up from Chapter 10 onwards. Again, since so much of this evolved between being opened for edit (11pm) and hitting save the last time (4am) there might be mistakes. PMs with errors are appreciated! (As are reviews. I love reviews. Reviews are like oxygen, feeding my fanfiction fire. Yay reviews!)  
_


	9. Arbitrātus

_A/N: If you've read the previous chapter, and the sensitive content warning in the first chapter, then you should have an idea of what's coming. So, consider yourself warned._

 _In this chapter: Carson has secrets, but he's not telling. Casey has a whole bunch of secrets, but they all belong to Major Lorne. Also, an Octopus and a Snickers bar.  
_

* * *

 **Arbitrātus** (Noun, [ar-bi-tra-tus]): a choice; decision; free will; option; right to judgement; jurisdiction.

* * *

Casey dislodges her hand from Sheppard's. He doesn't move away. Instead, he just stares at the floor, hands lying limply against his thighs. She's not sure if his catatonia is because of the news, or the fact that he had been right.

 _Pregnant._

The Xenobiologist in her is fascinated at the idea that she may be carrying an Iratus-human hybrid child, curious to know what it would look like and how it would behave, but she knows it shouldn't, wouldn't, and won't happen.

"Do you believe the... baby... will have both Human and Iratus DNA?" Her voice is surprisingly strong. _Do you believe this child will be a form of wraith? That's how they evolved, right?  
_ She won't say that out loud though. She doesn't have to. Beckett will understand.

Carson considers for a moment, then nods.

"The likelihood is extremely high. I could na' say in what proportions, though." _He would have to do post-partum DNA analysis to confirm. That's too long to wait.  
_

She doesn't ask if it is physically possible for a human to carry a hybrid child to term, because it doesn't matter. They've all agreed (except Sheppard, but he'll be sworn to secrecy momentarily) to never tell anyone the truth about what happened. The child would be both a security risk and a health risk, and can never be allowed to exist. Not to mention the kind of life the child would be subjected to as soon as the IOA or the NID found out about its existence.

More importantly, Casey thinks, is the socio-legal and political ramifications. Atlantis had just narrowly avoided losing Sheppard to the transformation. She's pretty sure they wouldn't want to lose him to rape charges under UCMJ, either. She had said it was important for Sheppard to have choice, for her to have choice. And now she had a choice, a decision to make for both of them. It's really a no-brainer. The best course of action for her, Atlantis, and for Sheppard, is to terminate. The room is quiet as they wait for her response.

"So, how do we safely induce without anybody finding out?" She jumps right to the crux of the matter. Miscarriages are serious business. They can be extremely risky, and she's pretty sure they don't include termination medication in the standard "Medical Supplies for another galaxy" first aid kit. She glances around at all of them in turn. Sure, Beckett is the doctor, but if this plan is going to work, they need to all be on board. Next to her, Sheppard looks like he might pass out with relief at her suggestion. She guesses Sheppard won't have to be sworn to secrecy after all - he seems to be perfectly happy with the idea of not telling anyone. Ever.

Lorne is grimacing, but he seems to be on board. When her gaze returns to the doctor, he blinks, and then clears his throat nervously.

"I can get what we need." Lorne and Sheppard both raise a brow at the doctor, who squirms slightly under their scrutiny. This is dangerous territory, for all of them.

Beckett clears his throat again, and then changes the topic.

"Yer feeling al'right, love?"

Casey nods. "Not much out of the ordinary, I suppose. Nothing specifically different."

"No morning sickness, tenderness, tiredness...?" Carson trails off as he realises he's asking her personal medical questions with two men in the room.

Casey shrugs.

"I felt a little... tingly... every now and then, the last few weeks, but that could have been anything." She gestures with her plastered arm. "Otherwise I feel completely normal."

Carson eyes her critically.

"I would run a scan, normally, but it'd be logged in the system and there's nae a chance it wouldn't pick up on the wee one." _He wouldn't be able to delete it, or hide it._

Casey nods in agreement.

"You should be fine tae simply go about yer business, fer now. I'll send word via Major Lorne once all th' arrangements are made."

She nods yet again, and doesn't ask any more questions. Unfortunately, Lorne has one of his own.

"How did you know?"

Casey shifts her weight, and turns to look at Sheppard. He gives a pained sign. Still looking at Sheppard, she addresses Carson.

"I believe Colonel Sheppard has something of an olfactory nature he would like to discuss with you, Doctor Beckett." She turns back to the Scottish physician. "We'll leave you two alone."

Beckett's gaze flickers to Sheppard, who looks thoroughly unhappy with the world.

Casey jerks her head at Major Lorne, and swipes a hand over the door control to open it. Lorne grudgingly follows her out, casting one final curious glance back at where his CO is now sequestered in the CMO's office. The door slides shut, closed from the inside by the doctor in question, and then it's just the two of them as they head out of the infirmary.

"So, you were looking for me?" she asks lightly, once they're back in the corridors outside the medical wing.

Lorne clears his throat.

"Uhh, yeah... about that..."

* * *

Between Beckett and Lorne the arrangements are all done within two days. Lorne brings her lunch in the Level 4 lab the next day and gives her the brief and cover story. The plan is somewhat elaborate but Carson had been insistent that everything needed to appear to be above board. It's set for execution two days later - it's a designated Sunday for both her and the Major, but Beckett is on duty with the morning shift. It seems Lorne has decided not to ask too many questions either, so they both simply put their faith in Dr Beckett and his somewhat overly paranoid set-up. Sheppard won't be involved beyond knowing that it was going to be done. It's better this way.

At the end of week five, Lorne shows up at her room at 0700 to join her on a morning run. They jog for fifteen minutes, just enough to work up a visible flush and enough sweat to sell it, before they double back down one of the quieter corridors towards the central tower. As they get close to the transporter station, they stop and Lorne 'helps' her to the infirmary where she is checked in under the story that she had slipped and fallen down a few stairs during their run. Beckett pretends to run a brief hand-held scan, before strapping up her ankle and handing her some "pain medication" that they both know isn't. Lorne returns to his run alone. Casey is held for observation for a while and then released back to her quarters to "rest".

Eight hours later Casey finds herself breathing through some nasty stomach cramps on the floor of her bathroom. Per the plan, she radios Major Lorne on the common channel, and apologises for not being able to join him at movie night because of instructions to stay off her ankle from Doctor Beckett. It's their code phrase, and Lorne heads off to find and notify Beckett that he's needed. They independently make their way to her quarters, Lorne arriving last. He waits in the room while Beckett sits with her in the bathroom. It feels like forever, but probably isn't more than an hour before it's all over.

As they clean up, Beckett informs her that the blastocyst is three times larger than a normal human embryo would be at five weeks. The wonder in his voice triggers the scientist in her, and she asks him if he would like to study it. Even she's curious to know. He looks at it ponderously for a few moments before shaking his head and sealing it up in the biohazard waste container he procured specifically for the event. Too risky, he says, and she sadly agrees. Someone else in the medical research labs might spot it, and then they would have explaining to do. She wants to ask Carson what his plan is for disposing of a biohazard container while he's not on duty, but she decides to rather not dig too deeply. Carson clearly has his own secrets, and she's content to let him keep them.

Carson gives her a muscle relaxant and painkiller concoction before he heads out, leaving her in the Major's capable hands. Lorne escorts her to bed, and takes a seat on the chair by her desk. He makes light conversation, telling her about the fit McKay threw when he found out about the _indestructible metal-eating waterbugs_ , and the resulting dramatics between the Head of Science and the Xenobiology department. Ellingson had apparently threatened to name them "Meridigrades" which had, for some incomprehensible reason, shut McKay up instantly and made him far more willing to negotiate reasonable protocols for further study. The Major is pretty sure that nobody else in Xeno is aware that he ratted them out, and Casey has to grin at having yet another Lorne secret to add to her collection. The medication kicks in not long after and she falls asleep without realising it. Lorne lets himself out.

When she wakes up the next morning, there's a Snickers bar on her bedside table. Lorne has an odd sense of humour, she thinks wryly, but it makes her smile anyway. She gets up, gets dressed, and heads back to her lab, back to work, and back to normal life.

* * *

Lorne still drops in occasionally to check on her, and she joins him and his team at the next movie night. Even Beckett stops by to say hello in the mess hall and to remind her that the cast can come off in a few days. She sees Teyla at a Girls Poker Night, and ends up trying to explain the various (now somewhat smudged) dirty jokes and pictures on her cast to the Athosian. There's a carefully drawn cross-hatch Octopus on the underside. Everyone assumes it's a Xeno thing, so she doesn't correct them. She doesn't tell them that it actually came from Major Lorne, who turned out to be surprisingly talented with a Sharpie. That's another secret in her Lorne stash.

Sheppard has taken to completely avoiding her.

She's not exactly looking for him. As far as she's concerned, everything has been sorted out, and if he wants to deal by pretending she doesn't exist, it really isn't her problem. They didn't really know each other or socialise before _The Incident_ , so why would they now? Being around him is occasionally unavoidable, and it's pretty awkward every time. Everyone believes it's because Sheppard feels really bad because he "beat her up" while he was blue, and it's a convenient explanation so they simply go with it.

Honestly though, Casey is fine. This is Pegasus, and although what happened was highly unpleasant, there are newer things to focus on. Problems to solve, challenges to overcome, species to study and knowledge to discover. Everyone on the Atlantis expedition is a little insane to begin with, and weird stuff happens so often that there's no more baseline for "normal". She's just fine. It was just another weird alien creature encounter.

This is what she tells herself to get through the day, and it seems to be working just fine, so she ignores the weird sensation she gets whenever she sees Sheppard and just pushes onwards. It wasn't him. It wasn't Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard.

Her life goes on as normal.

Sleeping.

Eating.

Working.

Socialising.

The cast comes off, and Exercise is added to the list to regain strength in her arm.

All totally normal.

Everything is perfectly fine.

* * *

Her doorbell chimes again, insistently, and Casey flails an arm over the light controls beside her. She grudgingly drags herself upright. A quick glance at her watch has her groaning. Seriously? It's 3am. Who in their right mind would be at her door in the middle of the night? The door chimes again. Whoever it is, they're not going anywhere, and clearly don't care that they've woken her up.

"Yeah, I'm coming!" she grumps at her visitor as she pulls herself into a pair of sweatpants and stumbles across the room to wave a hand over the door sensor.

It whooshes open to reveal an apologetic-looking Major Lorne.

"Major?"

"I need your help."

She blinks at him, uncomprehendingly.

"I need your help," he repeats, and looks hesitant. "... to find Sheppard."


	10. Fortis

_A/N: It's never over._

 _In this chapter: Pyjamas. Angst. Dark Corridors. More Angst. Missing Colonels. Bravery._

* * *

 **Fortis** (Adjective, [for-tis]): bold; brave; fearless; courageous; enduring; valiant; tough.

* * *

"I need your help... to find Sheppard."

The look on Lorne's face probably gave away exactly how he felt about having to ask her, of all people, for assistance in this particular task; he didn't bother to try to hide it behind his usual mask of calm. He knew exactly what he was asking of her.

It was supposed to be over.

Casey blinked at him from inside the doorway of her room. The warm light from her bedside lamp produced a golden back-light effect, and her loose sleep-rumpled long hair framed her face like a halo. Lorne realised he was staring, and pulled himself back on task before the silence grew awkward. She had been half asleep when she'd opened the door and mumbled his rank, but now she was wide awake and watching him.

"Sheppard went off sensors earlier, and I... well, I can't find him. Usually I can find him when... he does this." Lorne tried to explain. She just looked at him. Right. Very few people knew about how Sheppard tended to handle his... issues. The Colonel had a strong connection to the city, and wasn't above using it when he wanted to be left alone. He took a breath, and thought of how best to phrase the problem.

"The Colonel has some... spots... in the city, where he goes to hang out if he wants to be alone. To deal with things."

Casey nodded. Everyone had their spots. Lorne had his own balcony, too. The Colonel held himself accountable for a great deal of things, and dropping off the map armed with a six-pack to go beat himself up emotionally in one of his spots after something bad happened was pretty typical behaviour. Lorne had learnt how to find him, fast, because he'd needed to track Sheppard down several times since becoming his XO.

"He's not in any of them." Lorne simply said. "I've been looking for him for hours. I think he's gone somewhere.. specific... to this particular situation. Somewhere beyond the sensors..."

Comprehension flashed across Casey's face.

Sometimes Sheppard would mix things up, and go somewhere relevant to the issue. A few days after the mission to unsuccessfully retrieve Lieutenant Ford, Sheppard had pulled his vanishing act and Lorne had gone to find him, again. He'd only been Sheppard's XO for a few weeks, but he'd sussed out most of the Colonel's regular spots by then. He hadn't been in any of them, and Lorne had eventually found him on a seemingly random balcony, looking out over the water. It had turned out to be the spot where Ford had been blown into the water with the wraith footsoldier attached to his chest.

This time, however, Lorne had a feeling that the specific location where the Colonel was hiding was the one only Casey knew how to get to: The sunken cave-room where Sheppard had taken her; where the Colonel had tried to "nest". She'd briefly described it to him, but had never actually told anyone exactly where it was located. He'd never pushed her to say more. But now here he was, outside her door at 3am, asking her to show him where it was because he firmly believed that Sheppard had gone back there. Both he and Carson had tried to help Sheppard through this particular funk twice already, with no success. Beyond him and Beckett, Sheppard didn't have anyone to talk to about it. Not that he ever talked all that much, but he couldn't even go to his team, to Teyla or to Ronon or even McKay, this time.

Casey's expression has gone from sleepy to awake to contemplative. Lorne keeps quiet, because there isn't much more to say. Casey has to decide, so he waits.

They both know that Sheppard believed he had finally done the unforgivable. He'd even said as much to Lorne. That was about all he had said, actually, when Lorne had tried to pin him down in their office the day before and push him out of his quiet funk.

* * *

 _I crossed a line, Major._

 _You can't hold yourself indefinitely responsible for everything that goes wrong, Sir._

 _I don't. I forgive myself, eventually._ Lorne had looked sceptical at that. Sheppard had shrugged. _Waking the Wraith? Inevitable and naively accidental. Naquadah generator EMPs? The only way to stop the nanovirus. Killing over 60 people during the Genii invasion? A soldier's duty, defending his home. Nuclear bomb suicide runs? Someone had to, and better me than someone else._

Each of these had taken time for Sheppard to process, internally, and forgive himself for. Even Sumner's death had slowly faded, and while he still accepted the responsibility of ending Sumner's life, he didn't hold himself responsible for causing Sumner's death. He blamed the Wraith for that. Lorne had slowly dragged all these little admissions out of Sheppard over a period of months as they got to know each other.

This time Sheppard felt he'd crossed a line that could never be undone. It was him, him alone and nobody else, that had grabbed Casey, assaulted her, kidnapped her and raped her. He'd made a mistake in choosing his quarters for his confinement. He'd made a mistake in believing that two guards would be enough to stop him if he lost control. He'd chosen to escape his room in an attempt to force a security response that would kill him. Weir wouldn't order it, he'd known that. And she wouldn't try the Iratus eggs mission again. So he had tried to force her hand. He'd made a mistake in underestimating the Iratus bug influence on his mind, hadn't thought about what it might do once it was free. He blamed everything that had happened to Casey Cartwright on himself, purely and entirely, no excuses.

 _Some things can't be_ _forgiven._ Sheppard had walked away from him with those parting words, and had vanished into the city.

* * *

It was public knowledge that Casey had been attacked by the Colonel while he was bug-insane. Nobody except Lorne and Beckett, and Casey of course, knew the truth. Beckett had agreed to never put any of it into a report or a medical file, had checked Casey into the infirmary the second time under the guise of a (fake) tumble down some stairs, had fudged with the prescriptions to induce a miscarriage and had sat with her through it in her quarters. There were no scans logged, no blood samples or reports to indicate the pregnancy had ever existed, and nothing about the sexual assault in any paperwork anywhere. She had chosen to trust Lorne and tell him the whole story.

She looks at Lorne, standing on her doorstep, and decides that trust is absolute. She simply nods and turns back into her room to grab a pair of shoes and a jersey. It's cool in the belly of the city where they're going, and she's not going to waste time changing out of her pyjamas. They head off, Lorne at her side but following her lead.

"It's just us," he says, as they reach the transporter. "Nobody else."

The transport flashes.

"I'll be with you the whole time."

Casey just nods.

"You can stop, or turn around and leave whenever you want to... if you need to."

Lorne flicks on a flashlight that he pulled out of a pocket. He has to say these things, just so that they have been said. Casey looks down the dark passageway in front of them, and starts walking.

They both know that she won't stop.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later they reach the corridor outside the sunken room, and she hesitates. Lorne halts with her, immediately on guard, one hand hovering next to her arm but not touching her. She doesn't look at him, but looks instead down the corridor towards the doorway, willing herself to go through it. It's been seven weeks since that day, and two weeks since the covered-up miscarriage had finally brought resolution to the whole situation.

In her mind it was over and done, gone, finished, water under the bridge. Okay, probably not entirely, but she had chosen to move on and would mercilessly beat down the memories when they popped up until they surrendered and fled forever. She'd eventually had her turn with Dr Heightmeyer. After having talked to Lorne about it, seeing the city shrink wasn't half as bad as she'd expected. The bad dreams were already subsiding, and she'd been happily asleep for five hours before Lorne had woken her.

But this isn't a dream. This is reality, and at the other end of that passageway is 100% Sheppard, the nightmare's courier. 100% Sheppard, who could barely look at her, much less speak to her. 100% Sheppard, who had valiantly attempted to apologise after finding out from Lorne what he had done.

100% Sheppard, who had been about ten words into an awkward and mumbled and slightly-panic-inducing apology (she was alone in a room with him!), when he'd frozen, sniffed at her and blurted out that she smelt pregnant. 100% Sheppard, who had gone with her to Beckett and who had held her hand (that was super awkward) until Beckett had come back, pale and nervous, and asked what she'd like to do.

100% Sheppard, who probably didn't want but most likely needed her help to get past this. If Sheppard couldn't forgive himself, then the next best thing was for her to forgive him. She had the right.

Did she have the courage?


	11. Spērō

_A/N: Chapter 11! A shout-out to Sheppardlover928, Var Devonshire and Caty91 for all their reviews and love so far! You guys rock.  
_

 _In this chapter : Dark corridors, warm hands, broken promises, projectile photographs, and magical flying carpets.  
_

* * *

 **Spērō** (Verb, [spe-ro]): to expect; await; assume; suppose; anticipate; to hope for; believe something to be about to occur.

* * *

Casey took a deep breath, caught Lorne's hand (it was still as comfortingly warm and solid as she remembered) and squeezed it.

"Wait here for me?" she whispered, and Lorne grimaced.

"I really don't think...", Lorne started to say, and she interrupted him.

"This is the reason you asked me to come down here." Lorne looked unhappy, but he didn't say anything. "I'll be right at the end of this passage, just inside that door. If he's not there, I'll come right back. If he is..." Casey glanced down the dark hallway and took a deep breath.

"Look... I could have just told you how to get here, if all you needed was directions. But you and I both know that he's not going to talk to you. I'm probably the only person he _can_ talk to."

Lorne sighed and stared at the floor for a moment or two.

"Okay, but if anything.. and I mean _anything_... "

"I promise I'll scream real loud and you can rush in to rescue me." Casey finished for him.

Lorne looked at her. She held his gaze confidently. She had to do this. She was probably the only one who could. After a few moments, he seemed convinced by her conviction. He nodded, squeezed her hand and let go. She turned away and carefully worked her way down the dark corridor. When she glanced back, Lorne was watching from the shadows at the end of the corridor, almost completely invisible in the darkness. She faced forwards again and stepped through the doorway. The Major wouldn't leave until she came back out, that much she could be certain of.

Lorne had been right. Sheppard was sitting at the far edge of the overhang that formed what was left of the floor. His legs hung down into the pit where the missing ceiling began. From where she stood she couldn't see the corner where the nest had been. Now that she viewed it almost impartially, it was obvious why bug!Sheppard would have picked it. It was rather cave-like, dark and slightly damp, with an air of "underground-ness". He was staring intently at a bundle held in his hands. After a moment she recognised it - it was one of the blankets that he had acquired from somewhere while she was unconscious.

That was another thing that she had spent plenty of time thinking about. He'd been pretty rough and brutal towards her at the start, but once she'd passed out he'd done an about-turn and tried to take care of her. She'd figured that, biologically, it didn't make sense to kill the female you were trying to impregnate, because a dying or dead female could not carry your offspring to term. Of course, it could have been purely about the claiming. Once he'd claimed her, she was his - part of his pack or horde or nest or whatever the collective noun for a group of human-iratus-hybrids would be - and she thus fell under his protection and care. Maybe it was a little of both.

He'd been able to smell her pregnancy even after being returned to human, 100% himself again, so perhaps bug!Sheppard had known instinctively that the mating had been successful and she would bear offspring. They would never really know. Sheppard still didn't remember most of what had happened, and probably never would. The only reason he even knew what he had done was because Major Lorne had, bless his ever-calm-soul, flipped out at his CO's unaffected exuberance about being "100% John Sheppard again" and had tossed an actual paper file at him containing photographs that documented Casey's injuries.

* * *

Sheppard had sobered very quickly under his XO's glare and paper projectiles. Lorne's tone was dark and dangerous as he succinctly, with barely controlled anger, had laid the facts out for Sheppard. The Colonel had disappeared out of their shared office almost immediately after seeing the pictures. Turns out nobody had bothered to mention that he'd abducted and assaulted a scientist during his blue phase. He'd heard about the marines; Dr Weir had told him when he'd woken up after Ronon had stunned him. At that stage they hadn't known about Casey or her injuries yet. By the time he had transformed back enough to be properly lucid and awake, Casey had already been out of the infirmary and back at work. It had just never come up. He was still technically on medical leave when his seemingly uncaring cheerfulness had damaged Lorne's calm to the point of flinging file folders filled with photos at his CO.

Sheppard still had another 2 weeks off-duty, at least, with twice daily check-ins in the infirmary and a daily injection from Carson to ensure that no Iratus DNA lingered somewhere hidden. They hadn't done the official debrief yet. There hadn't been any paperwork yet. Weir and Caldwell had agreed, just before Caldwell had departed on the Daedalus and handed the city over to Lorne, that it would be best for Sheppard to write his official report once he was ' _fully reconverted'_ and had regained as much of his memories as possible. Nobody had thought to tell Sheppard, each thinking that _someone else had surely mentioned it already_ and there was no need to bring it up again.

Sheppard had made a beeline to Beckett, who had taken one look at his expression and had ushered him into the privacy of his office before confirming everything. Lorne had followed, but hadn't interrupted. He had been waiting outside Beckett's office when Sheppard had stormed out like a man on a mission. He'd tried to stop the Colonel, but Sheppard had dodged him and disappeared into a transporter. Lorne had immediately set off to find Casey first, before Sheppard could get to her. At the very least, he had to warn her that he'd broken his promise and had told Sheppard the truth about what had happened. Once he'd found her, he could worry about the fact that he had technically just assaulted a superior officer, not to mention probably irreparably harmed his working relationship with his CO.

Sheppard had found her first.

The meeting in the infirmary had followed, before she'd dragged Lorne off and left Sheppard to explain to Beckett that he could smell things he shouldn't be. Meanwhile, Lorne had told her about the incident in the office, and had apologised profusely to Casey for breaking his word and telling Sheppard what had happened. Considering the news that had just come out of her encounter with Sheppard, hearing that he'd found out because Lorne had lost his temper was downright amusing, in her opinion.

 _You... threw a ~file~ at his head?_ Lorne never lost his temper. Lorne didn't get angry. Lorne certainly didn't throw folders at his CO.

Lorne didn't think it was all that funny. Casey had simply patted him on the arm.

 _There was always a chance that he would remember by himself, wasn't there?_ Lorne had grudgingly agreed with her. There had been a chance.

 _Then does it really matter? There is no good way to learn about these things. At least, throwing office supplies at him sounds like fun._ Lorne had eventually given in to her cheerfulness and she'd managed a grin out of him, and 'flying file folders' got added to the Lorne bucket of secrets.

* * *

Sheppard may have been staring at the bundled blanket like it held all of life's answers, but he had still heard her coming. Or at least, heard _someone_ approaching, because the look of surprise on his face when he glanced up and saw her was unmistakeable. He'd probably been expecting Lorne again. After all, nobody else would be stupid enough to track Sheppard down deliberately during one of his funks, except Lorne, who had made an art and a skill of it.

Even Ronon would usually leave him be, but if anybody needed Sheppard they knew to ask Lorne to go get him. Lorne always knew where Sheppard was. It wasn't, but should have been, written into his job description as Sheppard's XO: _Keep track of your errant CO's location at all times_. For some inexplicable reason, Sheppard not only allowed it but actually seemed fine with Lorne intruding on his moments of solitude. He hid the look of surprise almost as fast as it appeared, but he knew she had seen it.

Casey calmly and deliberately walked over and sat herself down right next to him. She sat down so close they were almost touching. He stiffened and stared at the tightly grasped blanket in his hands as though he could will it to turn into a magic carpet and carry him away. She was going to have to say something, but she wasn't sure what to start with, so she jumped back to the last neutral thought she'd had upon arrival.

"Expecting Evan, were you?"


	12. Imperītia

_A/N: Sorry for the slight delay in posting Chapter 12 (the internet would not cooperate) but here it is! These last few chapters are shorter, and mostly conversation. When there's a lot of science or snark involved I have no difficulty writing entire monologues, especially for characters like McKay. Ronon is mostly grunting or a few succinct words. But writing angsty, feeling-filled speech, especially for everyone's favourite super-awkward Colonel was hard. Case in point:  
_

 _~o~o~o~_

Lt. Colonel John Sheppard: Look, Teyla... I'm not really good at, uh... actually, I'm... I'm terrible at expressing... I don't know what you'd call it, uh...

Teyla Emmagan: Feelings?

(Season 3, Episode 4 "Sateda")

~o~o~o~

 _I hope I managed to do the original character justice, while developing Casey as a character even further. I apologise in advance for the distinct lack of Lorne in this chapter. He's trying to be quiet back there in the passageway.  
_

 _In this chapter : awkwardness, sports analogies, lessons in xenobiology and chocolate._

* * *

 **Imperītia** (Noun, [im-peh-ree-tee-ah]): mortification; uneasiness; discomfiture; awkwardness; uncomfortable.

* * *

"Expecting Evan, were you?"

It seemed like a safe and friendly conversation opener.

Sheppard was silent for a few moments before finally easing up on his impersonation of a statue.

"Yeah." he replied with a casual shrug.

Oh boy, she was really going to have to drag words out of him.

"Well, sorry to disappoint," she remarked dryly. "I'm not as awesome as he is, but I assure you I'm definitely prettier."

That got more of the reaction that she had been looking for. Sheppard snorted almost silently, his shoulders jerking. A wry grin made an appearance. "I won't tell him you said that. Might hurt his feelings."

"I doubt it. He knows I'm prettier." she shrugged as well. "Don't tell him about the awesome part, though. I'll deny it." Sheppard inclined his head in agreement, but didn't say anything else.

"So, what brings you out to this beautiful little hideaway in the middle of the night?" And how the hell had he even found the cave-room on his own? She would have to go there, eventually, but there was no reason to get serious straight away. Keep it light, she thought to herself. Unfortunately Sheppard didn't have the same idea, or perhaps he just wasn't inclined to waste her time on friendly banter.

"Why are _you_ here?" he threw back at her. "This is the last place on Atlantis you should ever have to set foot in again, and I'm the last person you should ever want to come hunting for in the middle of the night."

"Why is that?" she boldly ventured. Sheppard looked at her then, his eyes a mixture of confusion and anger and something else she couldn't quite name. She shrugged at him. "If you're going to come out here to beat yourself up over me, then I figure I've at least earned the right to a ringside seat."

Sheppard blinked at that, obviously not expecting either the sports analogy or her insinuation that she was there to watch him suffer. Maybe both.

"I also think I've earned the right to choose to use that ringside seat to pass you water between rounds and cheer you on." Sheppard looked even more confused. She grinned at him, and he broke.

"Wait, you're seriously down.. here.. in the middle of the night to… try to make me feel better?" He was trying for casual, but his voice failed him halfway through. "Why would you do that?"

She shrugged again. "Is there anybody else who could?" He looked at her blankly. "Make you feel better, that is. Nobody else knows what really happened. Lorne says he's tried, twice. Beckett can heal the body, but you and I both know he's useless at trying to heal the soul. Always prescribes fishing." Sheppard gave a small huff-laugh-eyeroll at that, before looking away.

"That leaves just you and me, and you're clearly not getting anywhere on your own."

Sheppard glanced back down at the blanket in his hands as he considered her words. She stayed quiet. He knew why she was there, and now it was up to him. A good minute or so of silence followed. Finally he glanced at her before offering her the blanket. She accepted it, and he seemed to relax at that.

"Tell me." he said. "Tell me exactly what I did… and I don't mean just the physical injuries or such. I know about that. Tell me the things I don't remember, the things you saw that make you so willing to forgive me for… for…." he faltered at that point, and looked away again.

"I can't forgive you, Sheppard." He jerked his head up at that statement, blinking at her for a few seconds before turning his head away again. Obviously not what he'd expected to hear.

"Forgiving you implies that I hold you responsible for the things that happened. It wasn't you, John. It was someone..., _something..._ , completely different that grabbed me in that corridor, that tossed me around like a ragdoll, that dragged me off to its lair and claimed me as its mate." Sheppard was looking at her again, disbelief and horror and confusion all blending together.

"I'll tell you what I saw." She squared her shoulders and looked Sheppard straight in the eye.

"I saw a scared, territorial creature with highly developed survival instincts that was being hunted. I saw it actively assess me and decide that I was suitable, for whatever reason, to be its mate. I saw it seek shelter intelligently, and I saw it assert dominance over me in all the ways it knew how to. I study strange and unusual creatures for a living, Sheppard. I saw a strange creature do very characteristic things, over and over. It scented me, it marked me, it challenged me."

"When I chose to submit, I knew what I was potentially in for, but sue me, I wanted to take every chance I could get to survive. Yeah, it was… horrible…" Sheppard flinched at that,"...but all of its actions were purely instinctual. Pure animal behaviour. Pure survival. From that perspective the creature's behaviour was perfectly... normal. Rather, given that it was essentially a new hybridised life form it wasn't so much 'normal' as simply... nothing unusual about it. Even the nesting, in retrospect, was a reasonable behaviour given the hybridisation with a human form."

Sheppard blinked, and was silent for a little while, thinking.

"Scented...you?" he finally uttered. Casey grinned at him.

"Yeah. The sniffing thing. Plenty of that." Sheppard eyed her again.

"No wonder you didn't freak out or look at me funny when I told you that you smelt pregnant." he mumbled. She giggled a little.

"That was… unexpected, sure, but it wasn't all that preposterous, given the context."

Sheppard suddenly started, and then looked at her aghast. "Wait, wait… 'chose to submit'? You knew what I would do to you and you… let me… let it... " he gaped at her. She quickly jumped to defend herself.

"Based on the limited amount of behaviour I had observed till that point, I figured there were only two ways it could play out. If I submitted, it was likely that the creature would try to claim me as a mate. The sniffing and the licking and the fact that it hadn't killed me, had dragged me all the way out to somewhere secluded… all indications were that.. "

"Licking!?" Sheppard interrupted, aghast.

"Yeah, it licked the blood off my face, from my chin to my temple." Casey turned her head and dragged a finger up along the path Sheppard's tongue had taken. Sheppard blanched a little at that.

"Oh that's just wrong" he muttered. She shrugged.

"It wasn't after the blood specifically or anything. It was just… tasting me… I think. It's a good thing it stopped before it reached the cut on my forehead, or I would have needed a dose of that anti-bug medication Beckett developed for you. It's actually remarkable that, given everything, I didn't get infected by the retrovirus. It never found a way into my blood."

Sheppard looked like he couldn't choose between being horrified and relieved at that.

"Anyway, the options were submit or probably… die."

Sheppard looked away again, clenching both his fists where they rested on his thighs. Talking about potentially killing her probably wasn't helping. She leaned in conspiratorially and Sheppard's eyes flicked to hers as she grinned at him.

"I happen to think being alive is pretty awesome."

She digs into the pocket of her jersey, and Sheppard's attention is drawn by the crinkling noise. Tearing it open, she breaks it in half and offers part to Sheppard.

"Snickers bar?"


	13. Soleō

_A/N: Second-last chapter! Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel yet? Hehe.. ahem. Sorry. Bad pun. That's probably just Lorne playing with his flashlight because it's boring and dark back there in the passageway all by himself. Not really. He's being stealthy. So stealthy, in fact, that you won't even be able to spot him in this instalment. We're almost done though, I promise. You only have to bear with this conversation for one more update, and then it'll all be over.  
_

 _In this chapter: Mortification, voodoo magic, and irrepressible urges. And no Lorne (sorry)._

* * *

 **Soleō** (Verb, [so-le-o]): to be accustomed to; in the habit of; to tend to do; to be wont to.

* * *

"That's a pretty sucky choice, in my opinion." Sheppard offers around a mouthful of chocolate.

"What, the Snickers bar? Then why are you eating it?" She deliberately misunderstands his question, and pretends to sound offended.

Sheppard shakes his head in exasperation.

"Ain't nothing wrong with Snickers bars."

"Damn straight" she concurs, and takes another bite of hers.

"You always carry chocolate bars around in your pyjamas?" Sheppard asks wryly. At least he's engaging with her less hesitantly, now.

She shrugs and grins at him. "Makes midnight snacking infinitely easier, wouldn't you agree?"

Sheppard chews thoughtfully. "They were both still sucky choices."

She nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, well, once I figured out how to convey my submission, it all went rather quickly from there." She didn't elaborate, and Sheppard raised an eyebrow, obviously wanting to know more. She indulged him.

"Well, many different animal species use body language to convey submission, so I went with what I could think of at a moments' notice. I couldn't show my stomach, so I offered the creature my neck."

"Your neck?" Sheppard looked puzzled. Casey couldn't stop herself, and the scientist in her leapt at the chance to explain.

"Yeah, for almost all creatures the neck is considered a vulnerable area, and to a lot of animals if you deliberately expose a vulnerable area it's a way of saying "I give in, I place myself at your mercy." So I offered my neck and the creature fortunately seemed to understand, because it bit, or rather nipped, at my neck to test me, and then, not unlike a cat, proceeded to rub its scent glands all over my neck to mark me before it…" Sheppard had grown progressively more shifty as she'd explained, and had made a funny expression when she mentioned the glands.

"How'd you break your arm?" Sheppard broke in, obviously desperate to change the topic.

"Uhmm…" she hedged, not sure how to explain 'you were banging me so hard I screamed with pain and it pissed you off so you snapped my forearm with your sheer strength'. _It. IT took me. I pissed IT off. IT broke my arm._ She had to keep her pronouns straight or risk messing it all up. Sheppard blinked at her sudden reticence to answer. He still looked a little peaked from the licking, or maybe it was the biting, or the glands thing.

"Well.. it was pretty strong." she fumbled awkwardly. "... I may have... annoyed it by… err… screaming...while I was pinned down... and... erm... It snapped it with one hand." She finished the last statement in a rush. Yeah, that wasn't all that much better if Sheppard's expression was anything to go by.

"Pretty impressive, actually." Casey added hurriedly. As though that made it any better. Maybe it was time to shut up and hurry the story along. He was staring at the last bit of the Snickers bar as though he wasn't sure he still wanted to eat it. She rapidly forged ahead.

"Anyway, when I woke up I was completely cocooned in blankets, and the creature had built a defensive wall around me in the corner of the room. It took me a while to figure that one out, and I'm still not entirely sure if it was because it officially considered me its mate and was trying to build a nest to protect me and look after me, or if it was because it thought I was dead and was trying to bury me."

She chuckled at that thought, and Sheppard was looking at her as though she was completely insane. He was more than likely right. She waved a hand and moved on.

"Either way, it was gone when I woke up, so I decided it was time to attempt a... strategic nest evacuation. I got out and wandered around for a bit until Lorne and the others found me and took me to the infirmary." Sheppard was staring at his chocolate but his eyes wandered down into the pit below them, eyeing it critically.

She didn't mention how hard it had been to get dressed with just one hand, not to mention climb out of the pit. The table she'd dragged across the room was still standing below them, unmoved since her escape. "And you know the rest. It got caught trying to recruit Teyla into the harem, you retrieved the eggs from the cave, and then Carson and the others worked their voodoo reversal magic. All's well that ends well."

Sheppard is silent, still staring down into the darkness of the pit below them, but he seems to be considering her words. She hopes that her upbeat tone and general joviality, as well as honest scientific assessment of the events that took place will help him finally believe that she doesn't blame him for any of it, and that she really is fine.

Well, fine is relative. She's alive, her arm is healed, the stitches are all gone. All the physical evidence of the events of that day have completely faded. The scar on her forehead is a tiny pink stripe, healing well. Beckett had done an excellent job with the stitches, and once the pinkness of the new skin fades it should be nearly invisible. She's surprised by how… okay she feels, sitting here alone in the dimly lit room with Sheppard, the gaping pit that was her momentary hell just below them.

She's not afraid of being alone with him any more, she realises. And without the scary blue bug-creature, the room below her is just a room. A dank and dim room, with unpleasant memories, but still just a room. Sheppard is looking at her now.

"You really see me and the… creature… as two completely... uhh.. separate entities?" The question is tentative, and laced with a touch of disbelief. She nods.

"Your behaviour, sitting right here, that's you, right? The words and thoughts tumbling around in that head of yours are 100% you, right?" she taps her forehead. Sheppard nods as well.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm all... me, and only me, again."

"You feeling any irrepressible urges to kidnap people and drag them away to your secret underground lair?"

"Pretty sure I'm not." Sheppard remarked dryly.

"Well, then it is my scientific and professional opinion that yes, you and the Iratus-human-hybrid who attacked me are... were, rather... completely different, separate individuals. That was a creature, operating on pure animal instinct. You are Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and besides the semi-sentient hair, you two have absolutely nothing in common."

She grinned at him and waggled her eyebrows.

"Unless you have a secret sniffing and licking kink that nobody knows about?"


	14. Exitūs

_A/N: Alas, we have reached the end! I leave you with the biggest chapter (2888 words) to wrap up. Thanks to all my readers, especially the reviewers, followers and favouriters (is that a word?) for sticking with me through this slightly darker story. I promise the next story (it's almost finished, yay!) will be back to regular awesomeness filled with snark, humour, science, action and, as always, a touch of whump. Also, plenty of Lorne. If you're reading this some (or many) years into the future, I expect you to leave a review with good news about the resurrection of the Stargate franchise and the return of Lorne to our screens. In the meantime - there is much fan fiction to be written, so get out there and write! Keep SG-1, SG:A and SG:U alive!_

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 ** **Exitūs**** (Noun, Genitive, [ek-si-tus]): Departure; Egress; Way Out. {Figuratively: Conclusion; Ending; Result; Termination; Finish.} _  
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* * *

Sheppard's face scrunches up in horror.

"Hell no!" he exclaims, sounding offended. He runs his hand through his hair without even seeming to realise that he's doing it.

Casey grins at him, and he registers his action and stops halfway, yanking his hand back down. It leaves his hair looking even more unruly and gravity-defying than it did before. Casey just keeps grinning and Sheppard rolls his eyes and huffs at her. She giggles at the hilarity of it all, but Sheppard isn't quite all the way there yet.

"Not that I don't appreciate it, but I'm not all that sure that your... assessment... really makes me feel all that much better." He gestures vaguely. "We're pretty sure there's nothing of the… uhhm... _creature_ … "he wrangles with the word,"...left in my personality, but was there really... nothing of me in the creature, you think?"

Casey ponders that statement for a moment.

The man had a point. Beckett had basically declared that if they didn't treat Sheppard within a certain period, what was left of the man known as John Sheppard would be gone forever, and only the Iratus-hybrid would remain. But despite his vacation from lucidity, and the extent to which he had transformed physically, the treatment had worked and pretty much all of John Sheppard had returned, snark and swagger and all.

Since they had been able to bring him back completely, did it mean that he had been buried inside there, all along?

Oh crap, that was deep. She didn't want to do deep. _Lighten it up again, lighten it up._

"Well, I suppose we could blame the creature's good taste in selecting mates on you." she countered optimistically. "That'd make me feel a LOT better, too." She grinned at Sheppard, who had gone back to his 'you're insane' expression. "What? I take it as a compliment. Out of all the women on the entire base it picked _me_. Gotta feel just a little special about that."

Yep, definitely insane. But not crazy enough to mention her theory that the only reason he had picked her was because he had likely scented that she was ovulating and thus an ideal candidate for producing offspring. It was just a theory, after all. She would never be able to prove it, so there was no point in bringing it up. She had freaked him out enough already.

"Oh, and for the record, you build a mean blanket fort nest."

Sheppard threw his head back and laughed. Genuinely and properly laughed. Inwardly, Casey declared this intervention a success. She smiled at the chuckling figure beside her. Sheppard got his breath back, and popped the last bit of chocolate into his mouth.

It was getting cold, and they had been sitting out here for the better part of an hour already. She picked up the blanket lying in her lap and started unfolding it, intending to wrap it around her shoulders. "I still haven't figured out where these awesomely soft blankets came from. Nobody's reported missing any. Any chance you remember where you got them?" She swung the blanket over one shoulder and reached around to grab it on the other side when a pair of hands intervened.

Sheppard took the blanket from her, hopped up into a semi-crouch behind her and draped it around her shoulders. She tucked it in underneath her arms and pulled it close against her. Yep, still ridiculously soft. Sheppard shrugged, then glanced at his watch and grimaced.

"I didn't quite realise the time. I think it's best we get out of here, what do you say? Ready to get some sleep?" He stood up from his squat and offered her a hand to help her up. She took it, but made no move to get up.

"Are _you_?" she countered, holding his hand while also holding his gaze. A series of emotions flickered across his face in rapid succession, before disappearing. What remained was an almost shy smile. Not a smirk, not a grin… an honest and real smile, the kind that most people would never in their lifetime get to see on John Sheppard's face.

"Yeah, I do believe I am." She returned the smile as warmly and genuinely as she could, and let him take her weight as they teamworked her back onto her feet. "Or, at the very least, I'm... closer to getting there. Thank you." he added, still holding her hand.

She simply nodded at him, not really willing to speak. That weird sensation in her stomach had resolved itself into the undeniable truth that _she_ wasn't really okay. She had been lying to herself for weeks, letting the scientist in her overwhelm the human in her. However, she also knew that while they were both still a very long way from being completely okay, their conversation had definitely made a difference, for both of them. Enough of a difference for them to be able to get on with life and everything else that Pegasus would undoubtedly throw at them.

It didn't make them friends, but they were, thankfully, no longer two strangers at uncomfortable odds with each other. Lorne had taken a risk on both of them, and she would have to thank him for it later. Possibly with an entire case of Snickers bars. Sheppard gestured for her to go ahead of him, and she let go of his hand to step through the doorway. Behind her, Sheppard had stopped to look back at the entranceway to the pit, but he didn't linger for long.

The lights beyond the doorway went off, and Sheppard stepped out before beginning to coerce the doorway itself to slide shut. She ambled down the passageway to the junction where she had left the Major while behind her Sheppard battled the old rusty doorway closed with much grinding and groaning. Lorne was waiting around the corner, just a few steps away and out of sight. He looked up as she appeared, and she gave him a reassuring smile and a nod.

"Thank you" she said softly, hoping Sheppard wouldn't hear her over the noise the door was making. Lorne looked relieved that she had returned, nodded, and then shook his head.

"Thank _you_ ", he whispered back. He gave her a once-over with a critical eye, noting the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. He jerked his head back down the hallway, towards Sheppard.

"You... _both_ okay?" She nodded at him, catching the hastily added extra word. The man worried far too much for his own good, and his gaze darted back to the corridor behind her where the grinding was becoming more intermittent. Sheppard would be coming soon, and Casey wasn't sure if Lorne wanted to be seen. She wasn't sure if Sheppard would want to see his XO right now either. Best to get Lorne out of there, quickly, but she couldn't go with him.

"We'll be fine to get back to the city on on our own." Lorne raised an eyebrow at the "we", but didn't say anything further. He simply nodded, understanding, and gave her a little wave as he melted back into the shadows, his footsteps silent in comparison to Sheppard's coming down the corridor behind her. She was scheduled to have lunch with him and his team later that day, anyway. They would have a chance to talk properly, after.

Sheppard's head popped around the corner. "Couldn't get the damn door to close completely, but it's good enough. Who you talking to?" he quizzed, peering down the empty hallway where moments before the Major had stood.

"Nobody" she immediately replied. Sheppard gave her a _look_ , and she knew it was pointless to lie. At least Lorne was already gone.

"Fine, it was Evan."

"Lorne was here the whole time?" Sheppard blinked. "You needed back-up just to come talk to little ol' me?"

Casey grinned, shook her head at Sheppard and turned to head down the hallway in the opposite direction from where Lorne had gone. Sheppard hesitated just a second before following and falling into step next to her.

"No, Colonel." she smirked. " _I was_ the back-up."

Sheppard huffs a laugh at that and shoved his hands into his pockets as he strolled alongside her.

* * *

"So... you came down here in the middle of the night because Lorne asked you to?"

"Yup."

"He gave you the Snickers bar, didn't he." It was more a statement than a question.

"Yup."

"He really does love his Snickers bars." Sheppard intoned.

"Yup."

"You should totally ask him out." Sheppard remarked casually.

Casey blinked. What?!

"... Because he gave me a Snickers bar?" Casey eyed Sheppard dubiously.

"Yup."

Casey smacked Sheppard on the arm, or rather attempted to, because he deftly sidestepped her hand without breaking stride. He smirked at her.

"It'd be the greatest story ever, to tell your grand-kids on day." he grinned.

"Oh sure," Casey deadpanned, "I can just see it now. "Grandma, why did you marry Grandpa?" "Because he gave me a Snickers bar." "And?" "And that's it." Yeah, it'd be the ultimate love story."

Sheppard shrugged.

"Just sayin'. That man doesn't part with his Snickers bars easily. That he simply gave you one says _something_."

Casey rolled her eyes in exasperation.

" _If_ I should ever decide that I wanted to engage with Major Lorne in a... romantic fashion, I assure you... it will be absolutely _none_ of your business whatsoever."

Sheppard smirked.

"Yeah, well, if you ever wanted to get say... a case of Snickers bars.. to Atlantis without Lorne knowing about it, come talk to me."

Casey blinked at Sheppard. He couldn't possibly know what she had been thinking. It had to be pure coincidence, that particular suggestion. He shrugged.

"I know a guy. Has a ship. He'd do us a favour."

Casey simply shakes her head and carries on walking. Sheppard falls in next to her again, and together they amble their way back to the city proper in comfortable silence.

Seems she's not the only crazy one in Atlantis. Ask the Major out? Because of a Snickers bar? It's just a chocolate bar. Lorne was just looking out for her, like he does everyone in Atlantis. It's literally his job description. He's supposed to keep Sheppard out of trouble, mostly, and keep everyone else fed, supplied, and safe. Sure, there's a special chunk of plaster lying in a memento box in her cupboard. Carson hadn't batted an eyelid at her request to keep the Octopus piece intact. There was also the secret about the indestructible metal-eating water bugs that he'd snitched on. He _did_ assault Sheppard with a deadly stack of stapled papers on her behalf. He'd come to see her every day in the Infirmary. He'd met her for lunch regularly afterwards, even inviting her to join him and his team for movie nights...

Nah. Sheppard is insane. This is a known fact. Volunteering to catch alien energy creatures. Setting off Naquadah generator EMP bombs in the atmosphere. Taking on an Ancient wraith armed with nothing but a knife and a power bar. Fighting back and winning against an entire Genii invasion force on his own. Flying a completely manual F302 in a space dogfight against a Wraith AI, near the corona of a sun. Recruiting Ronon. Actively seeking out and hunting down Wraith. Yeah... Sheppard is insane.

Is he?

* * *

The door at the end of the passageway is three-quarters closed, but the gap is still just large enough for him to squeeze through without much noise. Once through, he flicks on his flashlight and pans the beam around the now dark room. It settles on the large hole in the ground. It's just as it was described. Making his way over, he shines the flashlight down into the space below, taking note of the flat console standing at the bottom. That would be the "table" that had been used to aid in the escape, then.

Gripping his flashlight in his teeth, he lowers himself carefully down into the gap, stepping easily from the jutting pipes down onto the console and then dropping to the floor. Dusting off his hands, he retrieves the flashlight and pans it around the room. All the furniture in the room is clustered around the far corner, some items stacked triple to make an impromptu but fairly thoroughly constructed blockade. He takes a few moments to assess the structure, and then, choosing his approach, carefully climbs up and makes his way over the barricade. He has to grip the light in his teeth a few more times, unwilling to either stow it or to attempt to turn on the interior light fixtures. He has to see what he's doing, and he has to be careful. Nobody knows he's down here, and if he hurts himself it would be a while before anyone comes looking for him.

Once on the other side, he turns his attention to the corner. It genuinely is a giant pile of blankets. Huh. Propping the light on the edge of a nearby console to cast light across the whole area he sets to work, retrieving and folding the blankets one by one until they're in a fairly neat stack. He slides the pile onto the highest part of the barricade that he can reach, retrieves his flashlight and climbs out, pausing at the top to toss the stack over onto the floor on the other side. Once he's down, he neatens and hoists the pile onto the stepping-console below the hole, stands up on it, and tosses the pile up and out of the hole in three bunches, before hoisting himself back out as well.

He retrieves the first two piles and stacks them again, and as he lifts the third he hears an odd crinkling sound. Hefting up the third pile he spots something fluttering to the ground next to him, out of the beam of his flashlight. He stacks the last of the blankets and turns his flashlight to investigate. Something white catches his eye, and as he bends down to retrieve it he realises what he's looking at. With a grin he flattens it out, folds it in half and then tucks it into a pocket. It really wouldn't do to leave trash lying about, even in an abandoned place like this. Still smiling, he lifts the stack of blankets and works them through the open sliver of door before letting himself out as well.

The blankets will go back to the Athosian lookout room on Level 15 of the Sector 8 Science Tower after they've been laundered. He's amazed that, even in his bug-state, Sheppard had remembered the room. It had been set up the previous year when the Athosians who were living in the city had wanted a safe place to go where they could see the stars at night. With its thick glass dome, and originally equipped with some rudimentary pallets and Athosian furs, it had quickly become a favoured place for groups of their guests to sleep when they missed the open night sky. After re-establishing contact with Earth, these extra-soft fleece blankets had been requisitioned specially to refurnish the room as a "night under the stars" observatory and relaxation spot. It was quite popular, and visiting Athosians who were transiting through the Gate for trade still preferred to come rest here in the communal sleep space. They got priority usage rights over Atlantis staff, and they especially loved the fleece blankets, having never felt something quite so soft and fuzzy before.

As he makes his way back to the city, Lorne wonders if Casey has ever been to the Lookout.

He's going to have to inventory his private stash of Snickers Bars.

* * *

They're almost back to civilisation when Sheppard stops abruptly, grabs her arm and spins her toward him with a look of sheer panic and terror on his face.

"What did you say… about Teyla... and… a _harem_!?"

~~~ Fin~~~


End file.
